Written by Paul Schwedelson – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
Oct 8, 2024
The Rite Aid at 3260 N. Broad St. in Philadelphia closed in late 2023.
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Temple University has acquired a North Broad Street shopping center near its health system campus and may add medical offices at the site.
Temple paid $8.2 million to Wynnewood-based Overbrook Investment Properties LLC for the 45,290-square-foot retail strip, according to property records. The site is fully occupied except for a 11,447-square-foot former Rite Aid store.
The property at 3216-60 N. Broad St. is on the southwest corner of Broad and Westmoreland streets, south of Temple University Hospital and facing Temple’s Maurice H. Kornberg School of Dentistry.
Temple Health CEO Michael A. Young said the health system is considering providing primary care physician services at the site. If those plans come to fruition, those services would fill the former Rite Aid space and the other retail tenants would remain, Temple spokesperson Steve Orbanek said.
Current tenants include Pizza Hut, PNC Bank, Philly Pretzel Factory and Fine Wine & Good Spirits. The property also includes a 14,710-square-foot parking lot adjacent to the former Rite Aid store.
Overbrook Investment Properties, which built the retail center in the early 2000s, considered developing five stories of residential above ground-floor retail, but only built one story due to economic conditions, according to MPN Realty’s marketing materials for the property.
The retail strip was up for sale prior to Rite Aid’s closure near the end of 2023. Once it closed, the site became more attractive to potential users and developers, said MPN’s Veronica Blum, who represented the seller along with Steven Clofine and Nadia Bilynsky.
The Rite Aid location was among hundreds closed as part of the pharmacy chain’s restructuring under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The store closure shifted the Broad Street property’s profile from a simple investment to a site that could be marketed for new uses.
“The opportunity to have a footprint of this size that gives the ability to build something does not come along that often,” Blum said.
Blum described the site as an “obvious fit” for Temple Health after Rite Aid’s decision to close the store “changed the drive for Temple to be aggressive on it.”
Lawrence Gariano of Graystone Capital Advisors served as a consultant to Temple on the deal.
While plans for the site aren’t fully formed, the purchase continues Temple’s recent aggressiveness in making real estate acquisitions. In February 2023, the school paid $4.3 million for the site of a 7-Eleven at 2034 N. Broad St. near the university’s main campus. The school now owns 12 of the 14 properties along the west side of Broad Street between Norris and Diamond streets.
In July, Temple hired President John Fry, who previously held the same role at Drexel University and played a key part in real estate development on and around the Drexel campus in University City. Drexel bought its own 7-Eleven site in July for $4 million in another example of a university seizing a real estate opportunity with an adjacent retail property.
