Government grants and city tax breaks subsidized most of the 5,000-plus hotel rooms that were built to accommodate the original Convention Center traffic, noted Paul Levy, head of the Center City District.
"We need about 2,000 more hotel rooms to fully optimize" the expanded Convention Center, Levy told the crowd.
Who will pay this time? Pennsylvania's debt-funded Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) was expanded under Rendell to subsidize developers around Philadelphia and across the state. But under Gov. Corbett and his Republican allies, "RACP is done, for the foreseeable future," Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger told the group.
There are other subsidies, noted Campus Apartments landlord and JFRE chairman David Adelman. "Mayor Nutter connected us" with federal subsidies and loans that, along with RACP money, raised $15 million for Adelman's $47 million, 136-room Homewood Suites at 41st and Walnut Streets in West Philadelphia.
Peter Soens, a partner at SSH Real Estate, which owns and manages buildings in the aging office districts around South Broad Street, pitched Pavilion at Market East, a 350,000-square- foot, four-story retail building he has proposed for the 1100 block of Market Street.
"There are stretches of Market East that have become an eyesore and an embarrassment for the city," Soens told the group. Retailers are interested, but "subsidies are the biggest hurdles," he said. "How do you finance it?"
Soens praised Ron Rubin's Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust for its proposal to build glowing billboards at its blank-walled Gallery mall nearby: "Retailers aren't paying as much rent," so the signs will give developers "creative incentives," Soens said.
