PhillyDeals: PhillyDeals: BlackRock's move to Philadelphia on hold

BlackRock Inc.'s

possible move to Philadelphia is on hold, a hostage to the weak investment markets.

Last summer, Pennsylvania and Philadelphia pledged tax breaks to lure up to 1,500 New Jersey-based jobs at the big investment company from central New Jersey to

Brandywine Realty Trust's

proposed Cira II tower in West Philadelphia.

But after BlackRock CEO

Laurence Fink

reported a disappointing profit yesterday, spokeswoman

Bobbie Collins

told me, "No decisions have been made," and "there is currently no timetable" for deciding whether to keep those jobs in central Jersey or move them to U-City.

Fink laid out his company's challenges in a conference call to investors, after reporting lower profit and investment losses: "Every asset class has suffered, and all

market participants have been affected." The company kept hiring, but it will likely cut some businesses.

BlackRock's also about to get a new investor, as

Bank of America Corp.

buys and replaces

Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.

Dec. 1. Fink said he would be talking to Ken Lewis, BofA chairman, "in the next few weeks" about plans.

Separately, Bank of America said its Wilmington-based credit card operation (formerly

MBNA Corp.

) lost $373 million in the third quarter as more borrowers didn't pay back their loans. That's down from a profit of more than $1 billion a year earlier.

Advanced Sensor Technology Inc.

, of King of Prussia, has buried 50 beer-can-size sensors under the greens, fairway and rough of the Merion Golf Club's championship course so

Matt Shaffer

, director of golf operations, doesn't have to guess how wet the grass is.

The sensors send data, by a wireless network, to a Google Earth image of the rolling links, on his office computer. GPS nodes on each green and fairway show red (dry), green (wet) or blue (normal).

That lets Shaffer irrigate and spray only where needed. "It's given us 35 to 40 percent savings on water and pump power, and it's dramatically reduced our dependence on chemicals to cut diseases," he told me.

The firm, which has other golf clients from Florida to Nevada, moved from North Palm Beach to King of Prussia earlier this year after veteran local investor

Bob Burch

(

Everlands

resorts,

Eagle's Eye

clothing) joined a $5 million investment round, after $10 million from others.

"We figure there's a $6 billion market for agricultural, residential and sports irrigation," says Advanced Sensor founder

Walt Norley

, who took up golf course maintenance after stints as a quarterback for Germantown Academy ('81) and the University of Georgia ('85).

The company employs eight agronomists and staff in King of Prussia, including

Carmen Magro

, who used to teach turf management at Pennsylvania State University, plus a team of seven engineers and developers in San Diego. "There's good companies that measure pollutants in the air and that monitor things in the water," Norley said. "We're really the first guys to measure everything in the soil."

David G. Kittle

, elected incoming president of the nationwide

Mortgage Bankers Association

at its San Francisco convention on Monday, was, until recently, listed on the group's Web site as the president of

Principle Wholesale Lending

, of Louisville, Ky.

But in MBA's announcement of Kittle's election, his day-job title changed: He's now executive vice president of

Vision Mortgage Capital

, which is based in Blue Bell, and owned by the

First National Bank of Chester County.

Vision is run by Philadelphia mortgage banker

Regina Lowrie,

former head of

Michael Karp's Gateway Funding Diversified Mortgage Services L.P.

Lowrie was herself the president of MBA in 2006.

Principle "is winding down its wholesale operations," since the market has dried up, Kittle told me. So Lowrie offered him a post at her firm, even though it didn't have operations near Louisville. "I'm going to develop the retail mortgage channel," said Kittle (when he's done running MBA). "We'll grow."

Lowrie and Kittle know each other from MBA's political action committee (MORPAC), which distributed $1.3 million, almost 60 percent to Republicans, on Lowrie's watch. It's trended a little more Democratic this year.

.