PhillyDeals: Power Windows & Siding has big plans in Chester

When Adam Kaliner told 200 office workers at Power Windows & Siding that he and cousin Jeff were moving their home-improvement firm in suburban Brookhaven to rundown Chester, they found it "daunting, and a little scary," he says.

But Power had outgrown the Brookhaven building and crowded parking lot where the Kaliners had arrived six years before from Newark, Del.

They checked out Buccini/Pollin Group's Baldwin Tower, the old locomotive-company office in Eddystone. Kaliner liked the "classic" look, but the up-and-down-stairs layout "didn't suit us," he said.

Sales agent Brendan Kelly sent them to the Wharf at Rivertown, Buccini's rebuilt former Delaware County Power Co. generating station, which developer Michael O'Neill turned into offices at the end of the 1990s.

The state-subsidized PPL Park, home of the Philadelphia Union soccer team, next door - and new ramps to I-95, U.S. 322, and the Commodore Barry Bridge to New Jersey, to open later this winter - helped sell the Kaliners.

A $200,000 state grant sweetened the deal so they could buy new furniture. The facility is also in a sales-tax-exempt Keystone Opportunity Zone, though that benefit is scheduled to expire in the next few years.

"We're planning on adding 90 jobs a year" at the headquarters - accounting, call center, recruiting, Kaliner said. The office supports the trucking and dispatch center at Alan and Fran Levin's Northeast Building Products in Northeast Philadelphia, plus existing regional operations in Cranford, N.J.; Greenbelt, Md.; and Stratford, Conn., and planned expansion in Long Island, Boston, and Atlanta later this year. All will be funded internally, without bank loans or investors.

How can Power expect to grow so fast? Federal tax breaks for energy savings have boosted demand, though they are scheduled to diminish this year. Plus, says Kaliner, "a lot of competitors closed their doors." One local rival, Windowizards, suspended operations - temporarily, it said - after problems with a supplier last month.

Gov. Rendell is scheduled to help dedicate the new Power office Tuesday. He gave more aid to a rival foreign company last year, U.K.-based Mark Group, which was given $3.3 million in state loans and grants to pick a site at the Navy Yard, where it said it will hire 300.

Buccini, like other landlords, lost tenants in the recession. Wells Fargo & Co., newly enlarged by its purchase of Wachovia Bank, remains the dominant tenant at the Wharf at Rivertown. But AdminServe, an insurance software firm that had planned to double its employment there to 400, moved out after Oracle consolidated the company with Primavera Systems at its Bala Cynwyd headquarters. Oracle bought the two firms in 2008.

Synergy Innovative Solutions also gave up some of its Wharf space, though it remains a tenant, as does German packaging-maker SIG Combibloc.

Buccini has an adjoining site to handle Power Windows' planned expansion, and it wants to build an office building for the Union and other tenants.

What of the homes and stores the Buccinis had hoped to start in Chester, when the real estate business collapsed in 2008? Residential real estate "is going to lag" the larger economy, Rob Buccini said.

"We're going to lead with apartments," not homes, he added. In Wilmington, the Buccinis claim "96 percent occupancy" at their new apartment tower across the Christina River from the Amtrak station, but they've had to hire auctioneers and cut prices to find buyers for units of the neighboring 183-unit condo building (170 sold so far, Buccini says).

While their 240-unit Justison Landing apartments in Wilmington are "95 percent leased," the neighboring 100 condos "will take us two years to sell." Still, Buccini says, Wilmington continues to attract new restaurants, the Queen Theater/World Cafe performance venue is scheduled to open April 1, and "we're working on an Imax theater."

But there's no schedule for apartments in Chester yet.