Office Space

Never mind the stop-and-go traffic on Route 130. Don't mention rush hour around the Medford Circle. Debbie Tornquist is certain her company, Tempel Steel, got a heck of a deal in moving from Bucks County to Burlington County. "We don't like the roads there. The roads are nice here," said the administrative assistant for the Chicago-based company, which moved to the Bromley Commons office park in Burlington Township last summer. "There's no traffic, no lights. " A relative lack of traffic congestion, competitive rents, newer roads and easier access to both Philadelphia and New York are being cited as reasons for a boom in office-space rentals in Burlington County.

Three years ago, with office vacancies in the upper teens and rents plunging, some building owners predicted hard times if a new skyscraper came onto the downtown scene. One owner, David Campoli, contended in 2004, during the public debate over public subsidies for a proposed 57-story high-rise for Comcast Corp., that the "Center City market is very bad. . . . There are 184 full-floor vacancies. " From 2000 to 2004, the city lost about 33,000 jobs. But seemingly against the odds, Center City pulled a rubber-burning 180-degree turn.

In Center City's competitive office market, four tenants are seeking enough space that a commitment by one could spark a new spire on the skyline. In the last year, Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby, a management-consulting firm; FMC Corp., a manufacturer of machinery and chemicals; CoreStates Financial Corp., the parent of Philadelphia National Bank, and the Conrail freight railroad have announced that they are evaluating their space needs. The firms, with space needs ranging from more than 200,000 square feet to 1 million square feet, are being courted by developers whose proposed towers are on hold for want of a lead tenant.

Zoe Selzer spent much of 2011 searching the city's building stock - from Northern Liberties to West Philadelphia - for a landlord willing to house what organizers believe is the region's first incubator exclusively for green businesses. What she heard was "no" in a variety of ways. That's because what she wanted along with about 5,000 square feet was to have that space at a drastically low rent or, preferably, no rent at all. "Nobody is ever going to do that for you," Selzer recalled was one response.

No vacancies? Well not exactly. But if the current trend continues in Philadelphia's suburbs, developers of office buildings and corporate parks may want to dust off their old No Vacancy signs. The suburban office market remains strong and vacancy rates are dropping despite the addition of nearly two million square feet of office space in the last six months, a new survey shows. The Valley Forge-Wayne area had the largest growth with the addition of 881,000 square feet of office space, while Bala Cynwyd boasted the lowest office-vacancy rate - 1.4 percent - of eight key suburban markets surveyed, according to Helmsley-Greenfield Inc., the Philadelphia real estate broker that conducted the study.

The Senate announced yesterday that it would get into the office-renting business, apparently to circumvent a state Ethics Commission ruling that prohibited a legislator from renting space from himself. The commission ruled in October that Rep. Italo Cappabianca (D., Erie) could not pay himself $500 monthly from his state expense account for a House district office in a building he owns. The seven-member commission in June voted 4-3 against a request to reconsider the case, citing a state ethics law provision against legislators' using their position to obtain personal financial gain.

Commercial office space is more difficult to find in Jenkintown than in any other area in the Philadelphia suburbs, according to a survey by an area real estate firm. As of June, Jenkintown had a vacancy rate of 7.6 percent, the lowest in a survey conducted by Helmsley-Greenfield in King of Prussia. The rate is 2.8 percent less than in December 1987. The borough overtook Bala Cynwyd as the area with the lowest vacancy rate in the suburbs because a 400,000-square-foot office building is under construction in Bala Cynwyd.

Easttown Township is considering buying an empty office building on Lancaster Avenue to use for offices, the public library and the police department. Township officials say they need more room, and the question of how to solve the space crunch dominated the agenda of Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting in Easttown Township. About 100 residents gathered in the auditorium of the former Berwyn Elementary School, the current home of the township's administrative offices. The township, entering into the last year of a 10-year lease agreement with the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, is considering alternatives.

The state of social satire and black comedy in Hollywood is in serious disrepair - for proof, look no further than this week's "Jawbreaker. " (See Page 53.) Hollywood is good at making fun of itself, but seems mystified by anything going on east of Mulholland Drive. As a consequence, its political commentary is uncertain and clumsy ("Bulworth"), its social commentary is ugly and lacking perspective ("Very Bad Things"). The best work, particularly on the subject of jobs and families, is being done by cartoonists - TV shows like "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," or the newspaper strip "Dilbert.

The vacancy rate for suburban office space dipped from 17.4 percent at the end of June to 16.6 percent at the end of September, according to a survey by a commercial real estate broker. In downtown Philadelphia, the vacancy rate was 13.8 percent at the end of September, up a 10th of a percent from the June rate, according to Robert W. Walters, executive vice president of CB Commercial Real Estate Group. The vacancy rate in the Exton-West Chester, King of Prussia and the Main Line dropped slightly, while the rate of vacancy increased slightly on the Upper Main Line.

Armed with a new doctorate from Cornell ; designs for 3-D printers that make colorful parts from paper, plaster, and plastic; and connections from his academic and consulting career, engineer- tinkerer-businessman Evan Malone returned to Philadelphia in 2008, opened NextFab Studio , and began marketing the for-profit lab full of digital workshop machines to the students, professors, and would-be entrepreneurs of the city's brainiest neighborhood....

The iconic 1616 Walnut Street building - listed on the National Register of Historic Places - has been purchased by Federal Capital Partners of Chevy Chase, Md., which is considering converting the office space to residential use. The sale of the 25-story Art Deco building marks FCP's second investment in Center City Philadelphia, after a $7.5 million loan it made in July to back redevelopment of the Robert Morris Building at 1701 Arch St....

Money's tight for Pennsylvania. But last month, a state agency went to Wall Street and borrowed $107 million to enrich a California hedge fund, a Wall Street bank, and other speculators in a Harrisburg office building. Result: Investors who bought bonds tied to the city's Forum Place at deep discounts are being paid full price to turn them in, giving them millions in profit. But state officials say that's still a good deal for taxpayers - because the new arrangement will allow state workers to park their cars at a discount.

Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, reported Tuesday that its profit fell 50 percent in the last quarter of 2011, partly because of declining revenue from the cholesterol drug Lipitor. The company's situation for all of last year - nearly flat revenue, a declining workforce, but a 21 percent profit increase - points to the tumultuous changes in the industry, globally and locally. One of the "key takeaways" in the slide presentation that Pfizer promoted to Wall Street analysts was that the company "achieved total cost reduction targets associated with the Wyeth acquisition one year ahead of schedule.

Three firms have been picked to share office space with The Inquirer and other Philadelphia Media Network outlets in the Project Liberty Digital Incubator , the newest local space dedicated to start-up tech businesses. The firms, selected by PMN adviser and incubator operator Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania , are CloudMine , a smartphone applications developer platform headed by CEO Brendan McCorkle; voter-guide app developer ElectNext , headed by Princeton and Wharton-trained political scientist Keya J. Dannenbaum , and SnipSnap , a print-to-mobile coupon scanner conversion service headed by Ted Mann . "We're providing these companies free rent, free office equipment, and the infrastructure to operate their business, day-to-day, for a six-month period, while they agree to develop a media product for consideration" by The Inquirer, the Daily News , Philadelphia SportsWeek , and Philly.com , spokesman Mark Block said.

Skanska USA, a construction-management and design-build company based in Blue Bell, has been awarded a $60 million contract to continue renovation work it began at Janssen Research & Development L.L.C., in Spring House in 2004. The latest project with Janssen, an affiliate of Johnson & Johnson, involves renovation to 180,000 square feet of office space to create modern and progressive laboratory upgrades, Skanska said. Construction is expected to be complete by December 2012.

What to get Councilwoman Maria Quiñones Sánchez and her husband, Tomas Sánchez, for the holidays? How about his and hers political donations? That would be jumping the gun, but only a little. Tomas Sánchez confirmed via e-mail that he is "seriously" considering a run for the state House in the newly redrawn 197th District. Jewell Williams currently holds that seat, but he is leaving to become Philadelphia's new sheriff. As "Heard in the Hall" reported previously, Williams has been touting his 23-year-old daughter, Jewel, to replace him. She is a "processing specialist," helping the Philadelphia Parking Authority auction off impounded vehicles.

CITY Councilman Bill Greenlee is about to move into one of the best digs in City Hall - a spacious office with two bathrooms, a kitchenette, a ceiling fan and a large alcove behind a big wooden desk - assigned to him by incoming Council President Darrell Clarke. Greenlee was Clarke's closest ally in his recent successful bid to become Council president. Coincidence? Greenlee thinks so. "The space opened up, I requested it and got it," Greenlee said, adding that when constituents come to the office he wants "to try to have as nice accommodations as possible.

Zoe Selzer spent much of 2011 searching the city's building stock - from Northern Liberties to West Philadelphia - for a landlord willing to house what organizers believe is the region's first incubator exclusively for green businesses. What she heard was "no" in a variety of ways. That's because what she wanted along with about 5,000 square feet was to have that space at a drastically low rent or, preferably, no rent at all. "Nobody is ever going to do that for you," Selzer recalled was one response.