Dranoff Breaks Ground on Green Rental

PHILADELPHIA-With Mayor Michael Nutter in attendance, a groundbreaking ceremony was held Thursday for Dranoff Properties’ 777 South Broad, a $70-million, 218,000-sf mixed-use three blocks south of its successful Symphony House condominiums at Broad and Pine streets. Unlike Symphony House, however, the LEED-registered project is comprised of high-end rental units along with 18,000 sf of ground-floor retail, and developer Carl Dranoff tells GlobeSt.com the market—and his company’s direction—have moved away from for-sale residential.

“It’s no great secret that the condo market has been soft in recent years,” says Dranoff. “Because so many condos have been erected, virtually no one has been focused on rental housing. Over the next three to five years, we see a scarcity of rental housing being developed, and two years ago, we made a decision to shift our development to all-rental.”

He adds that in a few years, the company’s development pendulum may shift back to for-sale housing. “But the market forces right now favor rentals.” For rental housing, the economics are “very different” compared to those for condos, “but we were able to cobble together the right combination of factors to make this project feasible and secure the financing.”