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PHILADELPHIA-The Hub, the smallest of three mixed-use projects chosen to bring more retail and market-rate off-campus housing to University City, has opened at a construction cost of $23 million. The nine-story post-modern building at 3935 Chestnut St. contains 101 residential rental units and approximately 26,000 sf of retail.

Like two other, larger projects, the Hub operates under a long-term ground lease to the University of Pennsylvania, which owns the land. The developer is locally based Teres Holdings LLC. Rental rates are in the range of $1,200 a month, and the owner of Old City's Amada tapas restaurant has leased space to open a new restaurant, called Condesa. Calls to Teres were not returned by deadline.

A university spokesman tells GlobeSt.com the Hub is part of Penn's "East Campus Strategy" to bring up to 1,000 off-campus apartments and additional retail near the campus by 2009. As GlobeSt.com previously reported, Houston-based Hanover Co. is developing a 295-unit, $100-million project at 34th and Chestnut streets, and University Partners, a division of Dallas-based FirstWorthing, will break ground this spring for a 150-unit, $50-million-plus building at 3900 Walnut St. The two projects will have an aggregate of approximately 65,000 sf of ground-floor retail.