Two days before an apartment complex once hailed as a shining example of Philadelphia’s urban renewal went up in flames, its owner, embattled city landlord Phil Pulley, transferred the vacant property to a New York investment firm.
Federal investigators are treating the fire as arson.
The property’s new owner, Aureus Special Asset Management, which records show is linked to investors in South Korea and Saudi Arabia, is now demolishing the West Philadelphia structure, known as Admiral Court.
Earlier this year, Pulley faced a $29.4 million foreclosure over unpaid debts linked to a fizzled redevelopment of Admiral Court and an adjacent complex, Dorsett Court. Instead of seeing investors foreclose on the property, he agreed to transfer both apartment complexes to his lenders.
Pulley signed the deed for that transaction on June 5. Less than 48 hours later, a fire broke out at the vacant building at 48th and Locust Streets, drawing more than 150 firefighters and support personnel to the scene. About 750 neighbors temporarily lost power. No injuries were reported.
The deed transfer for Admiral Court did not become a public record until late September, when it was sent to the Philadelphia Records Department and finalized.
West Philadelphia Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who in June called Pulley a “slumlord” and blamed him for allowing the buildings to rot, on Friday blasted the deal.
“The Admiral and Dorsett Court buildings could have provided affordable housing in one of West Philly’s most desirable neighborhoods. Instead, landlord Phil Pulley ignored repeated safety violations, leading to a devastating four-alarm fire,” Gauthier said in a statement. “The new owner appears to be a shell corporation with little transparency, and I’m deeply concerned that demolishing Admiral Court will create new blight and safety hazards.”
Crews started tearing down the building last week.
Pulley’s checkered history includes millions in unpaid taxes, hundreds of building code violations, and voter fraud. Two of his other apartment complexes have partially collapsed in recent years.
Pulley did not respond to requests for comment about the fire or deed transfer.
The circumstances of the blaze are now being investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, along with Philadelphia police and fire investigators. Ben Benson, a spokesperson for the ATF’s Philadelphia field office, said the agency had “determined that this was an intentionally set incendiary fire, and no accident.” He declined to comment further.
This month, the new owner of the charred four-story apartment building, Aureus Special Asset Management, obtained a permit to demolish it, according to Philadelphia records.
Aureus does not have a digital footprint. It shares a Madison Avenue mailing address with the New York City offices of Pacific General, an investment firm specializing in “transactions covering the United States, South Korea, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Pacific General’s corporate officers also signed documents for Descartes Specialty Finance, a Cayman Islands company that took over the mortgage for the troubled renovation of the West Philadelphia complexes. The company took Pulley to court in 2024 over the $25 million default, adding on millions in fees.
Reached at an office number for Pacific General, an individual who declined to be identified refused to comment. An attorney for Descartes did not respond to requests for comment.
Ed Nordskog, a former arson investigator with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said uncovering possible fraud connected to an arson is often a painstaking process. It can involve obscure insurance policies, construction loans, or hard-to-trace schemes.
“If it’s a fraud case, that can take months, if not years, to sort through the paperwork,” Nordskog said. “They are really difficult cases for local investigators.”
A history of troubled buildings
In 1989, then-U.S. Sen. John Heinz toured Admiral Court after the crumbling apartment building had been rehabbed with federal affordable-housing tax credits. He hailed the project as a symbol of Philadelphia’s revitalization.
Roughly 15 years later, Pulley acquired the building and neighboring Dorsett Court, along with a string of other affordable apartment complexes across the city.
The buildings quickly fell back into decay.
Both West Philadelphia properties have been vacant since 2018, when Pulley evicted dozens of families — many of them low-income — to make way for a planned renovation and sale.
While some work was done on Dorsett Court, on Locust Street next to Henry C. Lea Elementary School, progress stopped without explanation.
Admiral Court alone was cited 33 times by building inspectors since 2018, including several fire code violations in 2022.
“To watch them just sitting there vacant was heartbreaking for everyone involved,” said Phil Gentry, who has one child attending Lea and another who graduated. “It seems crazy, in the middle of this thriving neighborhood that desperately needs more housing, these nice-looking buildings are falling apart, catching on fire, or sitting vacant.”
Meanwhile, the city has continued to pursue Pulley in court over other properties.
In 2022, the facade of another Pulley complex — Lindley Towers, in Logan — collapsed, exposing a large section of the upper floors. The building was rendered uninhabitable, displacing about 100 residents. The city took Pulley to court, seeking millions to cover emergency repairs and other costs. That case is pending.
In October 2024, the Darrah School Apartments — which was also run by Pulley’s main property management company, SBG Management — partially collapsed, raining debris onto a Francisville side street. No injuries were reported. The building had been cited by city inspectors more than a dozen times.
This year, the city filed a fresh lien against Pulley’s company, citing $51,000 in unpaid gas bills. The city also launched a petition seeking a court-ordered sequestrator at yet another complex in West Philadelphia owned by Pulley’s company, the Winchester Apartments. That order would empower a third party to collect rent on SBG’s behalf in order to satisfy outstanding tax and utility bills.
Pulley is also facing an ongoing consumer-protection lawsuit filed in 2023 by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office. It accuses Pulley and a network of affiliated companies of mistreating tenants and a range of other “deplorable conduct.”
In January, Pulley was sentenced to three years’ probation and 100 hours of community service for casting ballots in several different counties in the 2020 and 2022 elections. He also pleaded guilty in May to voting in both Philadelphia and Montgomery County in 2021 and 2023.
Staff writers Jake Blumgart and Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.
