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Author: Joseph N. DiStefano

  • Sixers and Comcast hope to open up a block of East Market for ‘pop-ups’ during the World Cup and America 250

    Sixers and Comcast hope to open up a block of East Market for ‘pop-ups’ during the World Cup and America 250

    The companies that own the 76ers and Flyers earlier this year made a high-profile commitment to help transform the long-distressed East Market Street corridor.

    The first development to come out of that promise? Perhaps a mini-soccer pitch. Or a pop-up beer garden.

    The teams recently hired a contractor to demolish buildings they own on the 1000-block of the beleaguered thoroughfare with the goal of eventually erecting a major development that could help revitalize the area.

    But, until then, City Councilmember Mark Squilla said Friday the teams and city leaders hope to “activate” the lots slated for demolition with “pop-up” opportunities related to the FIFA World Cup and the nation’s 250th birthday being hosted in Philadelphia next summer.

    “The goal was: If they could demolish it by then and fill it, we could program an open space on 1000 Market Street,” Squilla said, tossing out the soccer pitch and beer garden ideas as examples. “This will give us an opportunity to try to do something special for 2026 while we’re doing a longterm plan for East Market.”

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    Jacklin Rhoads, a spokesperson for the teams’ development venture, said Friday the demolitions come as the partners “continue to make progress towards future development on East Market Street.”

    “The demolition of these vacant storefronts improves the streetscape and will give us the ability to work with community partners to activate the site ahead of groundbreaking,” Rhoads said. “We are committed to working with the City to help jump start the revitalization of Market East and this is the next step in that process.”

    The teams’ commitment to work together as Market East boosters stems from the controversial and since-abandoned proposal by the 76ers’ owner, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, to build an arena in Center City.

    The basketball team had pitched that proposal as an opportunity to rejuvenate the blocks east of City Hall. But when the plan crumbled in January — in no small part due to opposition from the Flyers’ owner, Comcast Spectacor — the teams vowed to work as partners both on a new arena in the South Philadelphia stadium complex as well as on a joint development venture for East Market Street.

    The Sixers and Flyers recently hired a joint venture of New York-based Turner Construction Co. and Indiana-based AECOM Hunt to manage construction of the arena, which will be home to the city’s NBA and NHL teams and its planned, as-yet-unnamed WNBA team.

    And the teams have hired Philadelphia- and Norristown-based contractor Pride Enterprises Inc. to demolish the vacant storefronts they own on East Market Street in Center City.

    Tearing down and popping up

    Demolitions are so far only planned for part of the 1000-block, across the street from where the Sixers had previously envisioned building their new home.

    HBSE and Comcast Spectacor — a subsidiary of the Philadelphia-based entertainment, cable television, and internet giant — bought properties on East Market Street in a series of transactions totaling $56 million earlier this year. The buildings were formerly home to Rite Aid, Reebok, and other stores totaling 112,000 square feet.

    The properties currently slated for demolition are 1000-1024 E. Market St. That includes most of the former stores on the block’s south side. The teams also own 920-938 E. Market St., the western half of the adjacent block, but those properties are not currently planned for tear-downs.

    The teams’ plan to flatten the stores, making the space temporarily available for events related to the FIFA World Cup or the nation’s 250th anniversary next summer.

    Squilla said an East Market task force will be announced soon, and that group would have input on what happens at the site assuming it is demolished in time for the 2026 celebrations.

    After that, the teams will redevelop the properties, although plans aren’t finalized, Rhoads said. The teams declined to provide any details about the redevelopment project’s ambitions or scale.

    The city Department of Planning & Development did not respond to a request on the status of the development plans.

    The neighborhoods around East Market, a thriving department store district that has languished for decades, have recently begun to rebound with the development of hundreds of apartments and neighborhood retail to serve new residents.

    Stadium construction vets tapped for South Philly arena

    The new arena in South Philly will replace the Flyers and Sixers’ current home at the recently renamed Xfinity Mobile Arena, which was known as the Wells Fargo Center until this year.

    Currently, Comcast Spectacor owns the building, and the 76ers pay rent. For the next facility, the teams will be joint owners.

    The teams have tapped an outfit with ample experience in stadium and arena construction for the job. Over the past 20 years, Turner-AECOM Hunt joint ventures have built the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, State Farm Arena in Atlanta, and Nissan Stadium in Nashville.

    In Philadelphia, they built the Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field, the FMC Tower, the One uCity Square office building in University City, and the Chubb Center in Center City, the insurance company offices set to open next year.

    For the South Philly project, the partners, doing business as PACT+, have brought on Philadelphia-based union contractors to do much of the work, including Black-owned general construction company Perryman Construction, construction manager Hunter Roberts Construction Group, and Camfred Construction.

    The teams haven’t said how large the arena will be. HBSE and Comcast Spectacor in June hired a design team at the firm Populous and Moody Nolan.

    David Adelman, the Philadelphia student housing developer and investor who chairs the teams’ development venture, in a statement promised “the most technologically advanced and fan-focused sports and entertainment venue.”

    Adelman earlier said the new arena will open in 2030, and the WNBA team will play its first game there.

    The project “is a chance to build something that becomes part of Philadelphia’s fabric,” said Turner’s Philadelphia-based vice president, Dave Kaminski, in a statement.

    Jason Kopp of AECOM Hunt promised “cutting-edge amenities for athletes, performers, and visitors.”

    Although the teams are making moves related to the new arena, they don’t yet appear to have shared much of their plan with City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, whose 2nd District includes the South Philadelphia stadium complex.

    Building an arena at that location will likely require involve fewer legislative and bureaucratic hurdles than the 76ers’ abandoned Center City proposal. But in Philadelphia, Council members hold enormous sway over their districts, and the teams will likely need Johnson’s support if they want a smooth approval process.

    Johnson was asked Thursday what the teams need to do to meet their proposed timeline for opening the arena in 2030.

    “I have no idea,” Johnson told reporters. “That’s not even on my radar at the moment.”

    Staff writer Mike Newall contributed to this article.

  • As Trump limits federal college loans, a new private lender specializes in lending to families desperate for a student to graduate

    As Trump limits federal college loans, a new private lender specializes in lending to families desperate for a student to graduate

    Colleges and universities expect the Trump administration’s new limits on government-backed student loans will drive more families to higher-cost private lenders. John Witter, CEO of industry leader Sallie Mae, expects his company will attract around $5 billion in new private loans, thanks to lifetime limits on taxpayer-backed student borrowing in President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

    Investors, meanwhile, are betting that private college loans will balloon under the Trump rules. But less than half of families who apply qualify for mainstream lenders’ private student loans.

    So a group of executives who used to work at Sallie Mae, which is based in Wilmington, have organized a start-up company, GradBridge, to make loans at higher interest rates to students who max out on scholarships and government loans but still hope to finish college or graduate school.

    On Wednesday, GradBridge said it had raised $20 million to speed its growth before the new loan limits begin next summer.

    The money was raised from private investors led by Acorn Investment Partners, which is managed by Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management. Oaktree’s investors include the Pennsylvania public schoolteachers’ (PSERS) and state workers’ (SERS) pension funds.

    GradBridge will be a “second-look” lender for families turned down by mainstream private college lenders, said Jen O’Donald, GradBridge founder and CEO.

    O’Donald, who lives in Chester County, is a former head of products for Sallie Mae and the mother of two college students. Her top lieutenants include chief financial officer Brian Carp and chief operations officer Lisa Kaplan, also Sallie Mae veterans. Advisers include Sallie Mae Bank’s former president, Paul Thome, and former chief credit officer Dan Hill.

    After Trump’s election last year, O’Donald said, she and former colleagues reviewed the “massive disruption” the Trump platform promised in college financing and looked for business opportunities.

    Even if only some of the changes were enacted, “only about 35% to 45% of private college loans get approved,” and many students’ families are not able to get a private student loan after they have exhausted federal grant and loan programs, she said in an interview.

    With the lifetime limits on student loans enacted by the Trump administration, O’Donald sees an “overwhelming shift” away from government programs to private loans over the next few years, as students grandfathered under earlier programs graduate and new students borrow up to the new program limits.

    GradBridge expects to get referrals from colleges and mainstream lenders of borrowers who don’t fit the high-end ability-to-pay profile.

    While mainstream lenders could charge an annual interest rate from the mid-single digits to as much as 18% a year, GradBridge might charge less-bankworthy borrowers an additional 3% or 4% on top of the mainstream rate, driving monthly payment up by $30 or $40 for every $10,000 owed.

    O’Donald said GradBridge offers an alternative to “credit cards, personal loans, parents’ 401(k) accounts, home equity loans” and other costly alternatives families use to help their children stay in college.

    Federal student loans are made to applicants who apply to government-approved, mostly four-year colleges, without the kind of traditional loan underwriting used to evaluate if borrowers are likely to repay home, auto, or small-business loans.

    Not surprisingly, those student loans suffer a high loss rate, the justification lenders used to get the government to agree to prevent federal student loan debtors from having their loans discharged in bankruptcy.

    But private lenders like Sallie Mae and GradBridge consider family income and other factors that affect whether the loan will likely be paid, O’Donald said.

    Most private college loans require adult cosigners. Because they rely mostly on family income to ensure they get paid back, lenders typically don’t worry about what majors or graduate degrees a borrower pursues, she added.

    “GradBridge’s approach addresses a real market gap” for students who “fall just outside of traditional credit underwriting models,” Yadin Rozov, Acorn’s chief investment officer, said in a statement.

    GradBridge employs around half a dozen people. It plans to increase to around 30 by 2027.

    O’Donald said the Wilmington area is a national center for student lending and a good place to hire for a loan start-up.

    Besides Sallie Mae, it is home to College Avenue, another student lender founded by Sallie Mae veterans; Navient, a student-loan servicing company; and other consumer payment companies.

    With college enrollments flat or declining, O’Donald said schools are eager to forge ties with private lenders.

    “The first big impact will be next summer,“ she said. ”It will take a few years before the full impact will be seen, but schools are starting to be concerned about how they will keep kids enrolled.”

  • Pennsylvania state government relies on H-1B workers. Trump wants to charge employers $100,000 for those visas.

    Pennsylvania state government relies on H-1B workers. Trump wants to charge employers $100,000 for those visas.

    Government contractors are among the big employers grappling with President Donald Trump’s plan to charge employers $100,000 for new H-1B visas, which allow hundreds of thousands of workers from foreign countries to work in the United States every year.

    Leading contractors such as Amazon Web Services at the federal level and Deloitte Consulting in Pennsylvania rely on H-1B visas to bring in foreign skilled professionals for their U.S. workforces.

    Once a supporter of the 35-year-old program, Trump said in a September executive order that he now agrees with critics that “systemic abuse” of the visas has displaced U.S. workers, “discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology,” and driving down wages. He announced a fee of $100,000 for new H-1B visas, which would significantly boost costs for government contractors and other employers that continue to use the visas.

    U.S. immigration officials issue up to 85,000 new H-1B visas a year. Generations of engineers and technical workers have moved to the United States to work for government agencies using these visas. Some remain as permanent residents and become citizens.

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    About 50% of all U.S. H-1B visa holders arrive from India, and the percentage is higher in technical fields. More than 80% of Deloitte H-1B visa holders stationed in the Harrisburg area from 2022-2024 originated in India, according to federal visa data. These professionals earned a median of around $100,000 a year.

    Recruiters promoted the visas extensively in 2000 to help U.S. companies update systems under Y2K programs, said Akanksha Kalra, an immigration attorney in Philadelphia who has represented many H-1B visa holders. Since then the program became so popular among employers and applicants that H-1B visas have been awarded through a lottery.

    Here’s what you need to know about H-1B visas.

    Who are the largest employers of H-1B workers in Pennsylvania?

    Among Pennsylvania-based employers, Deloitte Consulting is by far the top H-1B contractor. More than 3,000 of the 9,930 H-1B visas the government granted in Pennsylvania last year were for Deloitte Consulting and its tax and accounting affiliates. The company ranked among the 10 largest H-1B visa users across the U.S. last year. Pennsylvania was a major Deloitte client, paying $260 million for its services to state health, labor, and transportation programs, among others.

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    How long can people with H-1B visas work in the U.S.?

    Employers can apply to have H-1B visas extended for a total of six years, boosting the total of H-1B workers in the country at any one time to hundreds of thousands. Spouses of H-1B visa professionals often apply for H-4 work visas.

    Another program popular with employers, the Optional Practical Training work authorization, is available to foreign students entering the workforce, for up to three years; more than 400,000 were granted in 2024.

    Which states have the most H-1B workers?

    Six states — California, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania — account for more than half the 283,000 new and returning H-1B visas approved by the federal government for fiscal year 2024, the most recent data available.

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    The largest H-1B employers include Amazon’s Virginia operations, whose clients include the Pentagon and other U.S. security, surveillance, and technology agencies; other Big Tech employers such as Meta, Oracle, and Google; banks such as J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs; and manufacturers, such as automakers General Motors, Ford, and Tesla. Hospitals use the visas to bring in doctors, universities for professors.

    How does Pennsylvania state government rely on H-1B workers?

    Besides Deloitte, the visas are popular among small firms that specialize in IT contracting for Pennsylvania state government, according to a check of information technology firms contracted to Pennsylvania state departments under the no-bid Information Technology Supplemental Assistance (ITSA) program, which started in 2010 as a way to add short-term technical project assistance.

    Payments to ITSA contractors rose from $24 million in 2010 to $188 million last year, spread among hundreds of mostly small and specialized firms, according to data The Inquirer obtained in a Right to Know request.

    In each year, more than half of ITSA spending went to firms that were granted at least one H-1B visa. Together ITSA firms were awarded 171 H-1B visas last year, not counting Deloitte.

    What do Pennsylvania officials say about Trump’s $100,000 plan?

    A spokesperson for Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration said state officials are studying Trump’s proposal.

    State agencies don’t themselves sponsor H-1B visa applicants, and the state “does not have information hired by suppliers through the federal H-1B visa program,” said Dan Egan, a spokesperson for the state Office of Administration.

    However, OST Inc., the state contractor that oversees hundreds of information technology contractors to more than 30 Pennsylvania state agencies, requires them to report H-1B visa holders, as well as participants in other foreign guest worker programs such as the OPT visa. OST didn’t respond to inquiries.

    Is a scarcity of Pennsylvania tech talent forcing employers to bring in staff from abroad?

    The National Bureau of Economic Research says H-1B has reduced employment and wages for U.S. citizen data scientists but also cut technology costs, benefiting the economy. American workers have testified in Congress about being laid off by employers who hired visa holders.

    Pennsylvania legislators who held hearings on the ITSA program in 2017 did not dispute that the state faced a shortage of tech talent in the Harrisburg area. Contractors said the state should verify visa holders’ education and work experience to avoid overpaying.

    The Shapiro administration says it has created technology apprenticeship, internship, and fellowship programs that help Pennsylvanians without a college degree qualify for state tech jobs and help fill IT positions.

    Several publicly traded companies formerly based in central Pennsylvania, including TE Connectivity, Enviri, and Rite Aid moved their headquarters from the Harrisburg area to the Philadelphia metropolitan area in recent years. Each cited the difficulty finding American tech workers and managers willing to live in Central Pennsylvania.

    Why is Trump so interested in H-1B visas?

    In his Sept. 19 executive order, Trump noted that the visas are supposed to go to people who could do “high-skilled” jobs that Americans aren’t doing — but, he said, technology employers “have abused the H-1B statute and its regulations to artificially suppress wages” to the disadvantage of U.S. workers.

    That’s a switch for Trump, who last December defended H-1B. “I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump told the New York Post last December. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

    How are business and labor reacting to Trump’s H-1B plan?

    Though labor groups have long called for employers who use H-1B staff to pay higher wages, the United Auto Workers and American Association of University Professors have joined in a lawsuit to stop Trump from imposing what they call an illegal fee. On Oct. 16, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce also sued, calling Trump’s action “unlawful.”