American Real Estate Partners Breaks Ground in Philadelphia Suburb

Seven Tower Bridge. Image courtesy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

American Real Estate Partners, Oliver Tyrone Pulver Corp. and Partners Group have officially kicked off work on Seven Tower Bridge, a 260,000-square-foot Class A office tower in Conshohocken, Pa. Mesa West Capital, a unit of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, is providing $76.5 million in construction financing through a three-year, floating-rate loan. The project is located next to the 347,000-square-foot Eight Tower Bridge, which AREP acquired a year ago for $108 million.

Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the new development has already landed an anchor tenant, Hamilton Lane, which has signed for 130,000 square feet at the property. The private equity firm is set to move on the top five floors at the beginning of 2021, shortly after construction wraps up in the last quarter of 2020. Oliver Tyrone Pulver Corp., which will act as owner-manager, will lease 4,000 square feet at Seven Tower Bridge, while the building’s general contractor, Shoemaker Construction, will also occupy 5,000 square feet.

Located on Washington Street, very close to the intersection of interstates 76 and 468, the 14-story tower will be situated roughly 15 miles northwest of downtown Philadelphia and about 6 miles east of the King of Prussia shopping mall.

Seven Tower Bridge will be part of the 1.4 million-square-foot, mixed-use Tower Bridge development and, according to a previous release by Mesa West Capital, is also the first new office project in Conshohocken since 2002. The property, which will be located along the Schuylkill River and one block away from the Conshohocken rail station, will also include four stories of underground parking.

Steady fundamentals

Metro Philadelphia continues to show healthy office fundamentals, according to a recent Yardi Matrix report. Steady employment growth across office-using industries continues to fuel demand for new space. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington area gained a total of 12,600 jobs across the professional and business services, financial activities and information sectors in the 12 months ending in September.

Philadelphia’s office development pipeline, although continuing to be dominated by core submarkets, does not only encompass projects within or close to Center City. Additional Yardi Matrix data shows that, as of late November, almost 1.9 million square feet of the metro’s total 2.8 million square feet of office space under construction was located within the suburbs.