A New York-based developer that outbid real estate investor Dean Adler and Philadelphia’s PMC Property Group for control of the huge office complex at Centre Square has decided to walk away from the property.
Centre Square, one of Philadelphia’s largest office buildings, saw soaring vacancy after the COVID-19 pandemic and went into foreclosure in 2023.
In February, Adler announced that in partnership with PMC, he would buy the 1.76 million-square-foot office complex at 1500 Market St. for $70 million and transform it into a mixed-use mecca with hundreds of apartments and hotel space. The previous sale price in 2017 had been $328 million.
Then in May, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported that Manhattan-based CSC Coliving had bid $80 million for the project. CSC, too, planned a mix of residential, hotel, and office space.
“We were kicked out, and we didn’t fight it. We played by the rules,” Adler said. “We accepted when they were going to overbid us.”
On Thursday, the managing partner of CSC said his company had decided against the project.
“We backed out from 1500 Market,” said Salomon Smeke, managing partner and cofounder of CSC. “The tax abatement incentives in Philly were not enough to justify the conversion.”
Smeke said that “it would help” if a 20-year property tax abatement, like the one Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has been considering, were in place.
Asked for his reaction to CSC’s decision, Adler says that while he is still theoretically interested in the property, he will need to take another look to get a sense of why his competition backed out.
“Are we still interested? We are always interested,” Adler said. But he also said he would need to do more research.
“We are going to take our time,” Adler said. “I got to find out if there’s something we missed. Maybe they found something that we didn’t know, so we have to go back to do more homework.”
Philadelphia developer Dean Adler at the Center City District’s State of Center City event in April.
Adler has been on a roll of dramatic and ambitious adaptive reuse projects with his former company Lubert-Adler Real Estate Partners, transforming Philadelphia landmarks into mixed-use campuses, notably at the Bellevue Hotel on South Broad Street and the Battery on the Delaware River.
In these projects, Adler has championed a mix of residential, hotel, office, restaurant, and wellness.
Adler is also locked in a dispute with his former partner Keystone Property Group over the Bourse on Independence Mall, which he hoped to turn into another mixed-use hub.
The Centre Square project would have been CSC’s largest project in Philadelphia. The developer is known in Philadelphia for its purchase of the former International House in University City, rebranded as the Mason. CSC then toyed with the idea of turning the 3701 Chestnut St. tower into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.
North Philadelphia’s Francisville is getting an apartment building at 801 N. 19th St. after years of delay and a complexchange in ownership.
The six-story project, clad in red brick, will include 110 apartments and 49 underground parking spaces. The foundations are built, and construction is underway.
The project sits on an oddly shaped lot between 19th Street, Cameron Street, and Wylie Street, which neighbors call “the triangle lot.”
The property used to be owned by the Exton-based Hankin Group, which secured building permits for a 115-unit apartment building during the pandemic.
Hankin sold the property in 2021. Now two different townhouse projects are being developedon the site, one by West Philadelphia-based Guy Laren.
The apartment project is being built under the name of Cameron Square Partners LLC, which is registered at a West Philadelphia property owned by Laren.
On the Department of Licenses and Inspections website, violations for “walkway not provided” and a failure to post permits are being appealed by the Philadelphia-based developer, contractor, and property manager Vicintas.
Laren did not respond to a request for comment. Vicintas confirmed it is the general contractor and future property manager for the apartment building but did not reply to an interview request.
Hankin’s building permit is old enough that the Philadelphia Planning Commission decided it has to go through an advisory-only Civic Design Review process again, five years after its first go-around.
The new iteration of the project is different from what Hankin proposed, with 110 instead of 115 apartments but larger layouts. It has a new architect, too, with Philadelphia-based Harman Deutsch Ohler Architecture replacing global firm NORR.
“The new owner wanted some bigger units, so we’re down five units, and we increased the height by five feet, and then we redid the entire facade,” said Rustin Ohler, a principal with the firm.
The new plans call for 40 one-bedroom apartments and 35 two-bedroom units, with the remainder mostly being larger studio units known in the industry as “junior one-bedrooms.”
The apartments will have “more square footage, not necessarily more bedrooms,” Ohler said. “The previous design had a lot of studios. This is more ones and twos [bedrooms], and they’re a little larger than your average new construction coming to the market.”
Parking has been reduced from 52 to 48 spaces, although the development team plans to expand the number of spaces by automating the garage.
Such a system would eliminate the need for people to enter the facility, depending on mechanical systems to distribute and receive cars and allowing for a much larger parking capacity.
The latest design for the new apartment building at 801 N. 19th St., with an articulated brick identifier spelling out “801.”
The apartment building contains no retail but will have amenities including a gymnasium and a narrow roof deck, including a dog park, that is set back from the edge so it is not visible from the street.
At a June meeting of the Civic Design Review committee, a representative of the United Francisville Civic Association criticized the amount of parking in the project, the increased height, the roof deck, and the new building materials.
“What was originally approved was a five-story building,” said the representative, whose name was obscured in a recording. “This is now a six-story building, and it really towers above. It just adds a lot more height to the building based on the surroundings.”
At the June and July meetings, however, Ohler noted that the threeprojects on the triangle lot are already under construction and that the apartment project is hemmed in by the bordering townhouse developments.
That restricts what changes could be made to the architecture and layout of the project, despite community concerns.
A new rendering of the apartment building shows the roof deck broken into smaller chunks, to cut down on large crowds making noise and separated from the edges of the building by newly proposed solar panels.
The development team increased “the garage ceiling height in order to accommodate future stacked mechanical parking, which would potentially double our number of cars that we could have,” Ohler said.
Since the June meeting, the development team also added darker brick spelling out “801,″ as an identifier on the building’s south-facing facade and entrance.
Ohler noted that the roof deck has been broken up into four separate pockets to prevent large groups of residents from congregating. It also was pushed back from the street to accommodate neighbor concerns.
“The roof decks have been designed to be centered into the building, so that nobody can get near the edge,” Ohler said. “And we did add the solar panels, there’s no way for anybody to get near the edge, so that would address their concerns of sound from the roof deck.”
Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge James Crumlish III ordered California-based Tutor Perini Building Corp. to pay $42.4 million in damages to the subcontractor retained to install the building’s exterior, the Chicago-based Ventana DBS LLC.
“Throughout the project, Ventana was forced to navigate numerous obstructions and obstacles, stemming from Tutor Perini’s pervasive material breaches of contract,” Crumlish’s ruling read last week.
A Tutor Perini spokesperson said in April that the firm disagreed with the decision and intended to appeal it.
The contractor declined to comment on the new developments.
“This ruling is an important affirmation of the facts and of the principles that govern successful project delivery,” said Bob Clark, executive chairman of Clayco, a real estate development company that is Ventana’s parent company.
“We are pleased that the Court awarded Ventana $42 million in damages and recognized that Tutor Perini failed to properly coordinate its subcontractors while acting in bad faith by concealing its knowledge of significant concrete defects,” said Clark.
The judgment is the latest in the fallout from a construction project that Crumlish has said in an earlier ruling went “off the rails” because of Tutor Perini. Five years after the W hotel opened, the litigation is ongoing.
Tutor Perini was in court again Tuesday for the start of a new trial, this time for the judge to assess how much a concrete subcontractor, Thomas P. Carney Inc. Construction, owes Tutor for botching the job.
The proceeding had a tense opening as attorneys for Tutor Perini and Carney spent the morning arguing over motions.
Crumlish, who has previously chastised the parties for their animosity and turning the litigation into a “challenging behemoth,” expressed frustrations at times and ordered everyone to stop talking.
“I’m getting cranky, I will admit it,” the judge said at one point.
Disruptive and costly delays
Tutor Perini retained Ventana in 2015 for $14 million to assist in the design and installation of the building’ exterior and window-wall systems for floors nine to 50.
But when Ventana moved to install the hotel’s wall-window systems, they immediately noticed a “big problem,” according to the judge’s October memo. In many places, the concrete was not level or did not meet the elevation requirements in the design.
Tutor Perini denied there was a problem, while quietly attempting to grind the edges of the concrete slabs to address the issue.
By failing to supervise the concrete pours, Crumlish wrote in the recent ruling, Tutor Perini caused the “inefficient, obstructed, and impaired installation” of the window-wall systems.
“Ventana repeatedly encountered disruptive and costly delays due to Tutor’s lack of coordination while attempting to install its window wall systems,” the judge’s memo said.
Tutor Perini, for example, didn’t clear debris left by other subcontractors, the judge said, to allow the Ventana team to transport the window-wall components.
And while Tutor’s consultants confirmed the problem was the concrete pour, the company rejected Ventana’s delay notices and stopped paying the contractor.
Crumlish ordered Tutor to pay Ventana the $7.5 million unpaid subcontractor balance, $7.3 million in labor inefficiency costs, and $2.4 million unpaid change order requests, and $18 million in other costs.
The company is also on the hook for $7.1 million in attorney’s fees, expert witness fees, and litigation costs, bringing the total judgment to $42.4 million.
The W hotel opened in 2021 at 15th and Chestnut Streets, three years after its intended opening date, and it still cannot be fully occupied because some window vents are inoperable.
The project was developed by Brook Lenfest, son of former Inquirer owner H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, whose foundation continues to own the newspaper.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated with a statement from the subcontractor Ventana’s parent company.
The first public bathroom in the United States opened in 1869 in New York City. The controversies began not long after that.
Since then, the debate over the government’s role in providing public accommodations has reflected America’s political movements and controversies.
In the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, “comfort stations” were opened as an example of what good government could do. In the Jim Crow South, they were racially segregated. During the rise of the modern conservative movement in the 1980s, they were branded a typical failure of big government and closed.
More recently, opinions of public restrooms have ranged from fear of disease during the COVID-19 pandemic to a sanitary necessity for people living on the streets to targets of the backlash against trans rights.
Cities like Philadelphia are experimenting with bringing public toilets back in the form of the Philly Phlush: stainless steel contraptions that are easily cleaned but have limited privacy to keep people from sleeping or using drugs in them.
The Inquirer talked with Temple University history professor Bryant Simon about his new book For Customers Only: Public Bathrooms and the Making of American Inequality and the debate over government’s responsibility to provide accommodation.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for space.
When did public bathrooms first emerge?
What we understand as public bathrooms happened in the late 19th century, as privacy gets redefined and the scale of cities gets bigger. There’s a technology question here, too. You get the development of flush toilets and a really extensive sewer system.
The other important thing is there’s a shifting notion of government built around the Progressive Era. There were public-ish bathrooms before fully public bathrooms, but they were all maintained by private structures [mostly taverns]. They want to solve a problem that they think is both personal, scientific, and social, and they recognize that the private sector can’t handle it.
How long did it take for public bathrooms to become controversial?
That is the part of the story that surprised me the most. The answer is: almost immediately.
They offered privacy away from home. The public bathroom is seen by the middle and upper classes as an extension of the home. But privacy at home was exactly what working people, for the most part, didn’t have. Many working people lived in tenements with two or three brothers and sisters, their parents, and maybe their grandparents.
This is an opportunity. And they immediately seize it to drink, do drugs, sleep, do their hair. Most ominously, for those in control, they seize on it to have sex, particularly men.
As early as 1899, people in New York are complaining about men having sex in public bathrooms.
By 1905, Long Beach hires two out-of-work actors to entrap men in public bathrooms.
But [the authorities] can’t arrest their way out of it, and as early as the 1930s, public officials are beginning to advocate closing public bathrooms to scrub queer sex. The closing of public bathrooms becomes a way to edit people out of the public.
The cover of Bryant Simon’s new book.
Later, when segregation breaks down, southern leaders close public bathrooms. When mass homelessness first appeared, almost every single city closed public bathrooms. That’s what’s happening in the current moment with trans people.
But that leads to our current problem, where now no one really has access to public facilities away from home.
Why do public bathrooms seem to reflect major pressure points of our society?
I would slightly reframe it and say they help to make these inequalities.
Segregation is the most clear example. [White policymakers] are using the bathroom to not just divide people up but to really make them feel unequal.
There was one other story I found that blew me away, where a Black janitor [in the Jim Crow era] is told to deliberately not clean Black bathrooms in the Atlanta bus station. It makes [Black Americans] feel the neglect of the state, but it also creates a smell that they know white segregationists will read as Black inferiority, which they are manufacturing.
More recently, with the homeless, taking away public bathrooms is essentially denying their entire existence, their bodily needs. There’s a part in the book where I talk about Washington Square 20 years ago [where the public restroom was deliberately kept in a state of bad repair].
We want them to feel their inequality in a profound sort of way. This is insulting; it’s humiliating; it’s uncomfortable; it’s cruel. There is an element of cruelty that runs through the book.
Are paid toilets a policy solution?
If I were building an ideal society, I wouldn’t want paid toilets, but we’re so far from an ideal that the question is would it be able to provide more people with more access? And would pay toilets also guarantee maintenance along the way?
In a political fight, you have to know what you ultimately want and then what you’re willing to accept. [In Europe often] they’re just putting paid toilets in places where there’s wealthier people, or they’re servicing travelers only. They’re not really in service of the larger community.
This is why what’s happening in Philly is interesting. Of the first Philly Phlush toilets, two of them are in neighborhoods. There are not a lot of parallels to that. It helps to build them in parks.
What the past has taught us, and I think we know this in Philly really well, given the Starbucks incident downtown [where two Black men were arrested while sitting in a Starbucks and not purchasing anything] is that leaving things up to the private sector guarantees you inequality.
Bryant Simon is a history professor at Temple University.
In fact, if I were a progressive candidate, I would redefine sewer socialism to bathroom socialism. There was a Progressive Era reformer who said that these things show people in the most intimate way that government can work, and it actually could probably provide us leverage to do more.
It seems like a hard idea for politicians to champion because by its very nature, it evokes shame and disgust.
You’re right for another reason. Bathrooms are better at creating inequality than equality. The conundrum for politicians is the lack of public bathrooms is a place in which some really deep policy failures come into view. The housing problem, addiction, the collapse of the state, the fear of others.
And public bathrooms are pretty expensive now. So when politicians invest in them and they don’t immediately yield results, then it’s hard to argue for [bathroom] funding over a new roof for a public school or a new clinic in a neighborhood or extended library hours.
The really hard sell of the public bathroom is it’s the place that makes visible so many other problems that can’t be solved even with an investment of $300,000 for a public toilet.
But if you don’t solve them, you become San Diego [which had a major hepatitis an outbreak in 2017] or San Francisco, which is dealing with problems of open defecation and health problems for everyone.
It has the potential to affect all of us because of the health issues implied in not having enough public facilities.
Northeast Philadelphia’s Bustleton neighborhood is getting a new warehouse at 1685 and 1719 Fulmer St., a wooded area that was previously the site of a townhouse proposal.
The over 123,000-square-foot warehouse proposal comes from Georgia-based developer Stonemont Financial Group and the global asset manager Nuveen.
The 50-foot-tall warehouse would be built on land zoned for industrial uses, so it does not require zoning approvals. It is subject to community feedback only because it is large enough to trigger consideration by the city’s advisory-only Civic Design Review committee.
In January, the Fulmer Street property was purchased for $2.75 million by a limited liability company associated with Nuveen’s industrial investment team in Dallas.
The lot was sold by an LLC associated with Warminster-based County Builders, a suburban developer that hoped to build 60 townhouses or 48 duplexes on the wooded site.
“I’m disappointed the residential developer decided not to go forward with this project,” said Jack O’Hara, president of the Greater Bustleton Civic League, who planned to support County Builders’ plans at the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment. “The community greatly prefers residential over additional industrial.”
An aerial view of the Fulmer Street site, which is heavily wooded.
But while County Builders’ project had been embraced by the Greater Bustleton Civic League, a group of neighbors who live close to the site fiercely opposed the residential project during tense community meetings.
“A small group of immediate neighbors were vocally opposed to basically any development, but they were especially opposed to the residential development,” O’Harasaid. “And their comeback [to the residential builders] was we’ll take industrial. So, that’s what we’re left with.”
When presenting the proposal to the Greater Bustleton Civic League, the warehouse developers told residents that they do not yet have a tenant for the proposed building but are marketing the location.
The architect for the 1685 and 1719 Fulmer St. warehouse development is Ware Malcomb, a national design firm. A request for comment from the project’s zoning attorney was not returned.
Recent years have seen a burst of new warehouse projects in Northeast Philadelphia, which contains large tracts of developable land. Much of that property has been zoned industrial and saw little interest from builders for decades.
But as the recent surge in e-commerce and other kinds of new, nonmanufacturing industrial uses have grown, more of these properties have been seeing increased interest from developers.
This story has been updated to correct the last name of the president of the Greater Bustleton Civic League. He is Jack O’Hara.
Five buildings in downtown Bryn Mawr, including the storefronts of Carina Sorella, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, and the Buttery Bryn Mawr, are up for sale.
The Bryn Mawr Collection, a nearly26,000-square-foot portfolio that includes residential, retail, medical, and office space, was recently listed by real estate firm CBRE. The properties are owned by Main Line-based real estate developer Tim Rubin and are located in the heart of Bryn Mawr at 834-40 W. Lancaster Ave. and 860-66 W. Lancaster Ave.
CBRE’s Chris Munley said the properties could sell for around $12 million.
Rubin is a Narberth native who has owned the properties for almost 20 years. With the sale, he is hoping to recycle capital and make a similar investment somewhere else, Munley said.
The Bryn Mawr Collection is “extremely rare, irreplaceable ‘Main Street’ real estate, providing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break into a high barrier to entry market,” according to the listing. The portfolio is a stone’s throw from the Bryn Mawr SEPTA station and down the road from Villanova University, making it well positioned in one of the region’s most “affluent, educated, and densely populated suburban communities,” the listing reads.
The properties are currently home to TCO Fly Shop, the Buttery, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, and Carina Sorella, as well as apartments and offices.
Beloved tenants such as Carina Sorella and The Buttery, which opened last week, aren’t going anywhere, Munley said. The successful businesses are “one of the reasons this is attractive” for potential buyers, and they have long-term leases that would extend beyond the sale of the properties.
The properties are in their second week on the market, and Munley said the level of interest has been “eye-opening.” In addition to local players looking to expand their portfolio on the Main Line, Munley said he has seen interest from investors that usually focus on larger markets like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
More than a third of short-term rental properties like Airbnb and VRBO in Philadelphia have licensing issues, according to a new report from the City Controller’s office released Tuesday.
The controller found that of 3,734 analyzed licenses associated with short-term rentals, 1,327 were expired ornoncompliant.
“Short-term rentals are an increasingly important part of Philadelphia’s lodging market, especially during major events that we’re experiencing right now,” City Controller Christy Brady said in a news release.
“The industry’s growth requires a clear, efficient regulatory framework with strong licensing and enforcement tools to identify noncompliance,” her statement read.
In one casehighlighted by the report, the controller found a host operating 50 listings in the city without any of the correct licensing.
In other cases — including one property offering renters the chance to “Chill in Style Anime Themed Escape”— licenses were either absent or associated with unrelated uses like dumpsters or towing companies.
Philadelphia’s short-term rental market has been in the spotlight this summer, as the city hosts major tourism events including the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the World Cup, and Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.
The city has 121 registered hotels with 19,615 rooms and over 4,000 short-term rentals.
That’s a large reduction from before the licensing regulations took effect in 2023, according to the Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I).
L&I says it has removed 10,452 unlicensed properties from rental sites since the beginning of 2024.
Under the regulations adopted in 2023, short-term rental hosts who live in the properties they are renting have to get a zoning permit and a “Limited Lodging Operators License.”
For those who do not live in the property, a zoning permit and a rental license with a hotel designation is needed. The licenses must be renewed annually.
No short-term rentals are allowed in the Far Northeast section of Philadelphia, where City Councilmember Brian J. O’Neill, a Republican, banned them.
The controller’s report recommends simplifying the “complicated compliance process for hosts” and switching to a more tech-oriented enforcement approach, which could monitor “noncompliant listing across multiple platforms.”
The result, the report suggests, would help the system move away from “complaint-driven enforcement managed by a small staff” of L&I workers.
Nashville and Mount Pleasant, S.C., have outsourced short-term rental regulation monitoring to third-party companies using automated tools to track listings across platforms.
As a result, they both saw over 90% of rentals complying with local laws, a huge increase from the previous status quo.
“The city can benefit from using technology-assisted monitoring tools that can support the identification of potentially noncompliant listings across multiple booking platforms,” Brady said in a statement. “Other cities are already utilizing this technology and significantly improving their enforcement measures.”
In the run up to the World Cup, short-term rental hosts in Philadelphia — as well as hotel leaders — have expressed concern that the anticipated level of consumer interest before this summer’s festivities has not fully materialized.
Just before the games began, the region’s short-term rental market had an occupancy of about 60%, according to AirDNA, which analyzes data from companies like Airbnb and VRBO.
In the post-pandemic hybrid-work environment, Philadelphia office space remains cheaper than most other major metro areas, according to a new report from the online real estate platform Commercial Cafe.
Asking rents for Philly offices were $31.26 per square foot on average as of May, the report found. That makes Philadelphia the only major market in the Northeast below the national average of $33.61 per square foot.
Relative to other major U.S. markets, only Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix recorded lower average asking rents.
Elsewhere in the Northeast, Manhattan averaged the most expensive asking rents at more than $69 per square foot, according to the report. Boston’s asking rents were around $44 and New Jersey’s were more than $35.
Philadelphia’s 18.4% office vacancy rate, meanwhile, was slightly higher than the other Northeast markets, as well as the national average of 17.6%, according to the report.
The analysis, released last week, reflected the broader challenges that all office markets are up against. In Philadelphia and elsewhere, the office landscape has shrunk since the pandemic, with many employers downsizing their space amid the rise of hybrid work.
Some Center City office buildings have plummeted in value and are now becoming apartment complexes. Among them: The iconic Wanamaker Building and Centre Square, better known as the “Clothespin building” for the sculpture outside it.
Between January and May, $220 million in office sales were recorded in Philadelphia, according to the Commercial Cafe report, and $387 million in New Jersey. In the Garden State, 630,000 square feet of offices were under construction, found the report, which did not have under-construction data for Philadelphia.
Peter Kolaczynski, the director of Yardi Research, helped compile the report, and noted the trend toward office reuse.
“The destruction of value that we have discussed for years is showing through in the sales data,” Kolaczynski said in a statement. “With this decrease cost in acquisition comes opportunity — whether that is conversions to apartments, repositioning to best-in-class office and coworking, or full-on redevelopment and revitalization projects.”
Brian and Robyn Emmons can’t sell their 12-year-old, $900,000 rowhouse in Northern Liberties in its current state.
Fissures have spread across some of the walls in their home — which was built in 2014 — and cracks radiate from many doors and windows.
Three of their neighbors on Brown Street face similar issues. They say their homes were damaged by an apartment building constructed in 2023 that’s so close to the rear of their house they can almost touch it.
One family moved out after the city Department of Licenses and Inspections declared their home unsafe in 2024.
The Emmonses want to move to South Jersey, closer to family. Instead, as they wait for their second child to be born, they feel trapped.
“The fact that my neighbor was issued an order not to occupy the house, and it’s attached to our house, it’s just really scary,” said Brian Emmons, who has been a real estate developer in Philadelphia for almost 20 years. “We are stuck.”
Along with two neighbors, the Emmonses are suing the developer of the apartment building: Brian Zoubek, president and CEO of Zoubek Properties, who has built 250 houses in Philadelphia over his roughly decade-long career.
Since graduating from Duke University in 2010, where he played basketball for the Blue Devils, including on the national champion team that year, Zoubek tried his hand at a few occupations before settling on development. He has expanded his business to the Jersey Shore, recently debuting 10 almost million-dollar townhouses at a news conference with New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill.
“I’m extremely proud of what we’ve built in Philadelphia,” Zoubek said in an email. “I put my own name on my work because I stand behind every project we build.”
Zoubek faces lawsuits from the owners of three properties, all alleging that he damaged their Brown Street homes. An Inquirer review of court records found that Zoubek’s companies were similarly taken to court over allegations of sloppy construction practices by their contractors in at least three prior development projects.
The eastern end of Brown Street with rowhouses (gray), the new apartment building Zoubek built next door (white), and the former school he transformed into apartments (red brick).
The Northern Liberties rowhouses
Emmons and his neighbors sued last year alleging that the damage to their homes is the direct result of Zoubek’s redevelopment of the Mifflin School, built in 1825, just to the north of their homes.
In mid-2021, Zoubek purchased the property — the oldest surviving public school building in Philadelphia — and carved it into 15 apartments with 14 more wedged into a four-story addition on a small lot between the Brown Street homes and the historic structure.
The recent lawsuits contend that the developer dug too deep while excavating the basement of the new building and damaged their adjacent foundations. Within the three homes — which The Inquirer toured with Emmons — cracks grow in walls, floors slant, the shared garage leaks, and residents have struggled to open some windows and doorways.
The other two homeowners declined to speak on the record, citing the ongoing lawsuits. The residents of a fourth house have resolved their case against Zoubek.
“We are aware of the pending litigation and are actively defending these claims,” Zoubek said in an email. “Given the involvement of multiple parties, we are engaged in ongoing discovery and investigation and are confident the process will bear out the facts.”
Zoubek was named in two earlier lawsuits that accused his construction crews of slapdash work that damaged neighboring properties. A third suit alleged that his company’s work triggered a floor collapse that injured two deliverymen.
Zoubek said in a statement that all prior suits have been resolved.
For Emmons, the experience on Brown Street has an irony to it. Ten years ago, he was the face of development in Philadelphia as president of the Building Industry Association (BIA) — a real estate advocacy group — and vice president of a development firm Toll Brothers runs in the city.
Usually in the position of advocating for new development, Emmons counseled his neighbors when the project was announced that it was allowed by the property’s zoning and not worth resisting. But he did ask his fellow developer about his plans for the new apartment addition to the Mifflin School.
A gaping crack in a first-floor wall in a home at 301B Brown St. in Philadelphia.
“He clearly was doing things the wrong way,” Emmons said. “And I know that because I’m in the construction industry.”
Zoubek contests Emmons’ assertion. He argues that many of his 30 building projects in Philadelphia involve basement excavation next to existing properties and that the Mifflin School project was fully permitted and supervised by skilled professionals.
“That experience, combined with the engineering oversight on this project, reflects how seriously we take this work,” Zoubek said in an email. “After concerns were raised, the project was reviewed by L&I, which did not issue violations or take enforcement action.”
A trail of lawsuits
Zoubek has been building in the Philadelphia area for more than 10 years, mostly developing small apartment buildings or a handful of rowhouses in the city’s booming river ward neighborhoods.
Zoubek, at 7-foot-1-inch, was a basketball star at Haddonfield Memorial High School and got into real estate after a stint running a cream puffery and, later, as a real estate agent for Cushman Wakefield.
He started his own firm, Zoubek Properties, in 2014 and a related construction management company called Z Builds. He also cofounded another company, Catalyst City Development, with childhood friend Tyler McNeil.
As his construction business grew, his enterprises were drawn into complex litigation alleging property damage or injury caused during construction.
Brian Zoubek in his now defunct cream puff shop Dream Puffz, a pre-development venture, in 2012.
According to one lawsuit, Catalyst, the company Zoubek cofounded, and Manayunk-based Grit Construction worked together on a small development on Hope Street in Northern Liberties in 2019. During construction, Grit ruptured a lateral pipe connecting a sewer main to a strip of nearby businessesfacing an adjacent block of Front Street.
Exhibits from that lawsuit show Zoubek proactively contacted the neighboring property owner, reassuring him that his crews had quickly rerouted the noxious flow by splicing in PVC piping until a more permanent fix could be made.
“Broke some sort of line,” Zoubek texted to the adjacent property owner, along with a photo of the messy scene. “So we put in a temp one.”
But a week later, business owners next door were complaining about chronic plumbing issues. The temporary line had become clogged with rubble and other debris from the ongoing construction.
According to the suit, in June, the toilets and sinks at a packing business on Front Street erupted as sewage backed up and flooded into the commercial unit. The next day, a barbershop next door was inundated with filth.
A plumber came out to snake out the line but discovered that Zoubek’s crews had capped the severed line. Eventually, tenants fled.
“Our tenants cannot continue with sewage backed up into their space,” a property manager for the commercial units next door wrote to Zoubek, in a 2020 email.
Zoubek said that the case had settled but offered few other details: “The matter was ultimately resolved between the parties.”
Zoubek Properties had also hired Grit and contractor All-State Services to demolish a building under the El in Fishtown in 2019 and build several new apartments.
In 2021, the owner of a neighboring apartment complex sued, saying that during teardown crews punched holes in the side of the adjacent building, damaging its roof, framing, and supports.
According to that complaint, tenants told a property manager about “a big noise and shaking in the building” during the demolition process.
After arriving on the scene a short time later, the manager “observed All-State Services employees drinking alcohol while on the job and stumbling down off of heavy equipment,” the complaint said.
Zoubek said that his contractor eventually repaired the wall and that a claim for further damages was handled by the two insurance carriers.
“The matter is fully resolved,” he said.
The new luxury townhouses on Kentucky Avenue known as the Residences at Orange Loop in Atlantic City, which Zoubek revealed with New Jersey politicians earlier this year.
As that suit unfolded, Zoubek had another project underway in Old City, again for a small apartment complex on the 100 block of North Third Street.
In 2021, two deliverymen bringing in elevator counterweights for the construction project were told to use a rear entrance to deposit their cargo, according to a personal injury lawsuit filed the next year.
The suit contends that both the delivery company and the workers quizzed Zoubek’s crews about whether the rear entrance of the partially constructed building was structurally sound enough to handle the extreme weight of their load. They were assured that it had been inspected and was safe.
Instead, the floor collapsed, sending the men and their equipment crashing into the basement, injuring both delivery workers.
The suit was later settled for $6.5 million default judgment against the subcontractor.
“That matter was resolved through the appropriate legal and insurance processes,” Zoubek said.
Construction damages 50 rowhouses a year
Lawsuits and claims of construction damage are endemic to the real estate industry. And building in the tight confines of Philadelphia’s dense rowhouse neighborhoods can be especially contentious.
In the case of Brown Street, a spokesperson for Zoubek pointed The Inquirer to the website of Fortis Construction & Design, which built the five rowhouses there in 2014 and is now suspended by the city for “unpermitted, potentially dangerous underpinning and excavation.”
Cracks on the exterior of a home at 303A Brown St. in Philadelphia (left) on June 9.
Emmons, however, argues that the fault lies with Zoubek: The extensive damage to the Brown Street homes appeared only after the basement was dug out for the expansion of the Mifflin in 2023.
“He can point the finger all he wants, but I hope he lies awake at night praying nobody gets injured or killed,” Emmons said in an email.
Grocery Outlet bargain market is closing dozens of stores nationwide, including eight in the Philadelphia area.
The closures were first referenced earlier this week in the company’s earnings report. The California-based grocer recorded an operating loss of $221.7 million last year, much of which it attributed to “certain underperforming stores” that will now close.
These include five Grocery Outlets in South Jersey, two in Philadelphia, and one in Kennett Square, according to real estate marketing released Thursday.
A company spokesperson did not return a request for comment about when the stores would close.
The impacted Philly-area stores are located at:
4004 U.S. Route 130, Delran
401 Harmony Rd., Gibbstown
345 Scarlet Rd., Kennett Square
190 Hamilton Commons Dr., Mays Landing
2017 W. Oregon Ave., Philadelphia
2524 Welsh Rd., Philadelphia
3174 U.S. Route 9 S., Suite 5, Rio Grande
677 Berlin-Cross Keys Rd., Sicklerville
People shop at a Grocery Outlet in Philadelphia in 2022.
After the closures, the chain will still have several locations in the city, collar counties, and South Jersey.
Grocery Outlet calls itself an “extreme value retailer.” It was founded in 1946, and has expanded from 128 stores to 570 stores over the past two decades. Many locations are operated by entrepreneurs who live nearby.
“Consumer pressure intensified, federally funded benefits were delayed, and competition grew more promotional in the fourth quarter,” Potter said in a statement. “In response, we have begun to sharpen our focus on what matters most: delivering clearer value and a better in-store experience.”
Customers and employees inside a Grocery Outlet in Philadelphia in 2023.
A Wakefern spokesperson said the company planned to refocus on its flagship stores in South Philadelphia and Rittenhouse, as well as its growing online business. The move, spokesperson Maureen Gillespie said, would be “a positive reset that allows us to preserve and elevate the in‑store tradition while growing the brand’s reach in meaningful new ways.”
