Plans for UArts’ Anderson Hall take shape with ‘middle market’ apartments
One- and two-bedroom apartments are planned for the nine-story building at 333 S. Broad St.
New York-based Dwight City Group plans to transform Anderson Hall, a former University of the Arts academic building, into an apartment building with food-and-beverage retail on the ground floor and “maker spaces” or offices on the second and third floors.
The nine-story building at 333 S. Broad St. is the second largest of the University of the Arts buildings that are being auctioned off. Dwight City Group obtained it for $8.5 million.
City records show a zoning permit for 84 apartment units was issued Thursday, but Dwight City Group says that does not reflect their final plan.
“That might be our architect getting some preliminary designs going, but that’s not the official plan,” said Judah Angster, CEO of Dwight City Group. “We have an office and a maker space broker that is looking at the second and third floors. On the ground floor, we are talking to brokers that have experience placing food and beverage retail.”
The company is working with Philadelphia-based architect Raymond F. Rola.
Angster’s company has offices in Delaware County’s Upper Darby, and its adaptive reuse projects have mainly been focused in such working-class inner-ring suburbs and Philadelphia neighborhoods far beyond Center City and other high-end markets.
In the last five years, Dwight City Group has completed 11 adaptive reuse projects across the region that total 700,000 square feet, Angster said. Anderson Hall will be its first Center City project.
“We believe that the values in Center City have come down to a level that are more reasonable per square foot to begin doing projects in the closer core CBD [central business district],” Angster said.
Angster said his plans are far from finished and the unit count is not final. But he knows what type of apartments they will be. The company is not trying to develop luxury housing in the former UArts building, he said. Rents will be $1,600 to $1,800 for a one-bedroom, and two bedrooms will be $1,900 to $2,200.
“I don’t want to call it workforce housing per se because it’s a higher-end product than that,” Angster said. “You can really define it as a middle market approach.”
Dwight City Group was competing with Lindsey Scannapieco’s Scout, the company behind the redevelopment of the Bok building in South Philadelphia, for Furness and Hamilton Halls on the other side of South Broad Street.
But Scout ended up the victor, with plans for artist apartments and other arts and culture uses.
Longtime Philadelphia developer Carl Dranoff had eyed Anderson Hall and sought to add it to his collection of buildings on South Broad Street. But he confirmed that Dwight City Group successfully outbid him.