Midday Headlines: D.C. Firm Wants to Buy Closed Philadelphia Schools for $100M
“It sounds too go to be true,” says Mayor Nutter after learning about an unexpected proposition from Washington, D.C., to purchase recently closed schools in Philadelphia. The amount put on the table? $100M.
Municipal Acquisitions, a D.C.-based real estate investment firm, is the interested party. And according to the Inquirer, the firm offered to “buy more than 30 shuttered school buildings.” With all the floundering around to find a solution for funding city schools and getting rid of the abandoned ones, you’d think this news would have officials collaborating to make it happen.
However, although Nutter learned of the bid from City Council President Darrel Clarke, the mayor and Clarke don’t seem to be on the same page. “He knows the two most lucrative deals are Temple and Drexel. Let’s stop playing games,” Clarke has said.
For its part, the School District has considered the offer, but “weren’t comfortable with selling to one buyer and cutting out public input over the fate of the buildings, many of which are landmarks in their neighborhoods.”
In the meantime, here are other headlines:
- Ten stories down, twenty-three more to go! NakedPhilly updates us on the construction progress of Cira Centre South
- Philly.com looks back at how the Avenue of the Arts has helped improve real estate in Center City
- L&I will conduct an inquiry following a cinder-block wall collapse in Fishtown that sent a man to Hahnemann University Hospital in critical condition.
- Double-win for Old City where three historically-significant buildings were just saved and a redevelopment project for the Shirt Corner will go on as planned.
- AxisPhilly reveals the Office of the Philadelphia Sheriff was raided by the FBI for reasons involving “real estate transactions within the sheriff’s office dating from January 2011.”
- Haven’t lunched yet? Make a beeline for the newly opened DiBruno Brothers at the Franklin Building on Chestnut.
- Technical.ly Philly reports on tech start up Cloudmine’s most recent move: a new office in the Philadelphia Building on Walnut Street.
- More on that $48.8M property-tax reduction given to the Borgata
