PHILADELPHIA, PA—Panelists at the ALM Media RealShare Philadelphia conference held Wednesday at the historic Union League Club in Center City Philadelphia say the City of Brotherly Love may be better positioned than New York City for growth in its commercial real estate markets, and commented on the relative ease of doing business in the city.

“My observation from spending an awful lot of time in Philadelphia in the last year is that this may be the best city I've ever been to. It is amazing that I can get from one side of town to the other in under ten minutes,” says William “Billy” Procida, founder of Procida Funding & Advisors, a Capital Markets Update panelist and sponsor of the RealShare event, who has become an enthusiastic booster of the Philadelphia market. “We did a deal in Philadelphia and got it done in three days. If I had done it in New York it would have cost a million dollars in legal fees and would have taken a month to close.”

In January, as GlobeSt.com reported, Procida Funding provided $16.2 million for renovations at the Thaddeus Stevens School, which developer Eric Blumenfeld is turning into a luxury rental complex called the Mural Arts Lofts Building. Philadelphia has a rich history of elaborate mural art painted on the sides of vintage buildings. The artwork, including the side of Blumenfeld's building, is part of a popular series of city tours.