Commercial Real Estate Archives

Philadelphia developers, there is a lesson for you in the story of a new building in London. The 37-story building at 20 Fenchurch Street in the city’s financial district was originally dubbed the “Walkie Talkie,” in honor of its unusual shape. As the seasons changed, and the sun lowered on the horizon, that unusual shape has earned the building a new nickname: the fryscraper.

The rapid expansion of Comcast’s media empire over the past few years has caused their downtown Philadelphia headquarters to fill up quickly. The company’s growing workforce has included adding thousands of employees through their acquisition of NBC Universal. As a result, there is talk around town about a new tower the company may build in Center City. 

If the commercial real estate market has seen any gains since the recession, they have not been in the suburban Philadelphia office market. As far as rents are concerned, the slowdown started before the recession: To keep tenants in their buildings, landlords have held rents steady for 10 years or more. With hiring in a slump, more employees working at home and businesses opting for more shared space, office leasing has all but ground to a halt. 

Philadelphia, like just about every other major metropolitan area in the country, has suffered from a lagging real estate market as ripples of the Great Recession continue to affect potential buyers and sellers of property. But, a few recent high profile commercial real estate transactions in Philadelphia could indicate that the market is again on the upswing.

When the Court of Common Pleas reinstated their permit in June, it looked as though the owners of a new business would finally get to open their doors. The two have been fighting for two years to open a methadone clinic in Philadelphia’s Holmesburg neighborhood, facing staunch opposition from other businesses in the area.

There is a great Shirley Temple movie called “Stand Up and Cheer.” The year is 1934, and the country is in the depths of the Great Depression. President Roosevelt creates a Department of Amusement and gives the top job to a theatrical impressario. His job is simple: Cheer up the nation. The movie ends with a news flash: The Depression is over! Banks are opening up again! “We’re out of the red!” A musical number follows, and we all, yes, stand up and cheer.

The restaurant industry, as our readers may know, can be fickle. To stay in the business in the long run takes smart investing, hard work, and good business sense. That said, those who follow restaurant openings know that the Philadelphia region has been very active recently with restaurant openings. According to Nation’s Restaurant News, a trade publication, Philadelphia is among the 10 hottest restaurant markets in the United States.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal took a look at the changing face of the rental market, and it looks like changes may be ahead for landlords.

According to a recent study of other urban school districts’ closures by the Pew Charitable Trusts, charter schools are poised to purchase abandoned buildings. In fact, the organization found that over 40 percent of cities’ closed buildings were being reused by charter schools. Although another common reuse of such buildings is housing, repurposing schools as commercial sites often doesn’t sit well with local communities, which feel a sense of ownership of buildings

Real estate investor Howard Lutnick, known for rebuilding Cantor Fitzgerald after his brother’s death in the 2001 World Trade Center attack, has reportedly been doing a lot of investing in commercial real estate lately, betting that the slow economy will not prevent property deal from thriving on low-interest money.