Former A.C. Moore building on South Broad is getting a new tenant: the Center City District offices

Center City District is moving from its longtime offices in the western side of the Public Ledger building to a block south of City Hall in the Land Title Building at 100 S. Broad St.

The 26,588-square-foot space will be co-located with a police substation, and will fill the ground-floor space and a mezzanine at the southwest corner of Broad and Chestnut Streets.

“The benefit of the new space is that it will put CCD at a location at the center of downtown,” said Paul Levy, the president of Center City District, in a statement. “Additionally, the high visibility location at the center of the District is well-served by public transit and much closer to the four parks CCD programs and maintains.”

The move will put CCD, a business improvement district, within a short walk of Dilworth Park, arguably the organization’s crown jewel. Sister Cities Park, Cret Park, and John F. Collins Park, also managed by CCD, are nearby as well.

The move will fill one of South Broad Street’s premier retail locations, which has largely sat empty — with the exception of the occasional visitation by Spirit Halloween — since the A.C. Moore closed in 2019.

Dubbed the Avenue of the Arts during Ed Rendell’s mayoral administration, this stretch of South Broad hosts the Kimmel Center, the Union League, and a variety of tony restaurants and theaters. But its retail fortunes have waned in recent years, as companies including Wawa and Walgreens have retreated from the city.

“While I would have rather seen the storefront occupied by a retailer that the public can enjoy, it has been sitting vacant and available for several years so any use is better than empty,” said Steven Gartner, an executive vice president with real estate services company CBRE, who was not involved in the deal.

The Avenue of the Arts is recovering from the pandemic, although many theater audiences have not returned to their pre-2020 strength, and the Arthaus, an ultra-luxury condo building, has seen slow sales.

But there are positive signs as well. Beyond the CCD’s new offices, other investments include Insomnia Cookies’ new three-story headquarters, a $25 million rooftop restaurant for the Union League, plans for several new apartment buildings, and a huge new housing and commercial complex from Post Bros. is under construction at Broad Street and Washington Avenue.

The CCD’s new lease will last 10 years, and the move will be undertaken by mid-2024. The building is owned by ASI Management. The company’s president, Alex Schwartz, said that he is excited to host CCD and that their presence will help enliven South Broad Street.

“The Center City District is a well-established organization that will bring stability to a prime Broad Street retail location,” said Schwartz.

CCD has occupied its offices in the Public Ledger building since 2004, the majority of the business improvement district’s existence. Zoning permits were recently filed by the owner that show much of the building could be converted to apartments, although the two floors that CCD now occupies are slated to continue to be used as offices under the current scheme.

The move to South Broad “will enable all our operations management, office staff and the police substation to be located together in one continuous and connected space,” said Levy. “CCD staff currently is located on multiple floors.”