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W. Phila. office building on market for $46M

Owners of the five-story glass-and-brick building at 30 N. 41st St., west of the University of Pennsylvania campus - one of the few office projects built in the early part of this decade, when rents and values were weak from the recession - have put it on the market at the robust asking price of $46 million, or $469 a square foot. That is triple what some prominent Center City office buildings have traded for in recent years.

Owners of the five-story glass-and-brick building at 30 N. 41st St., west of the University of Pennsylvania campus - one of the few office projects built in the early part of this decade, when rents and values were weak from the recession - have put it on the market at the robust asking price of $46 million, or $469 a square foot. That is triple what some prominent Center City office buildings have traded for in recent years.

If they get their price for the building, dubbed 2.0 University Place, it will be a rich yield on the $31 million committed three years ago by its investors - University City redevelopers Scott Mazo and James Levin, and lawyer Thomas Leonard, a Democratic Party fund-raiser, with backing from TD Bank.

It helps that the building landed Philadelphia's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field office as its main tenant after the agency added a high environmental rating to its goals for its new space.

The 2.0 University Place building is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum-certified inside and out, with a green roof and medical-grade air filtering, said broker David Dolan, who has listed the property with colleague Michael Margolis at NGKF Capital Markets.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, which moved from Center City, occupies three of the building's five floors. The top floor is vacant.

Besides its federal tenant, the building also is in a Keystone Opportunity state and local tax-break zone, easing tenant costs through 2018.

The project was well-timed. With Penn Medicine, Drexel University, and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia all expanding, University City is the hottest office market in the region, according to NGKF's data. Asking rents in the Penn-Drexel area average $44.88 per square foot, highest in the Philadelphia area and a fat premium to the regional average of $27.51 per square foot, the brokerage says.

Local vacancy, at under 6 percent, is less than half the rate for any neighborhood in Center City or most suburban markets.