Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Real Estate Law Blog

We will continue our discussion about artist James Dupree’s fight with the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority in our next post. First, though, we want to go back a little further to the struggle of Atlantic City’s Revel casino to find a new buyer.

Anyone who has bought or sold a house will probably remember that they and the other party drew up a purchase agreement at some point in the proceedings. In commercial real estate, purchase agreements are also commonly used as a “road map” to direct the parties to closing. A well-made purchase agreement can avoid future problems by making each parties obligations clear, so that there is no confusion or misunderstanding.

The purchase of a Manhattan skyscraper by an American-Canadian partnership may be the capstone for a record year of Canadian investment in U.S. commercial properties. Reuters reports that Canadian investors purchased more than $8 billion worth of commercial real estate south of its border in the first three quarters of 2014, putting the country on target to beat last year’s record of $11.86 billion in purchases.

Developer Glenn Straub may have much to be thankful for this holiday season: His company is next in line to purchase Atlantic City’s Revel casino. Revel AC Inc. sought bankruptcy protection in June. The casino closed on Sept. 2, and less than a month later, a bankruptcy auction ended with Brookfield US Holdings LLC winning the property. Straub objected to the sale, complaining that Revel’s representatives were not open and honest in their negotiations with prospective buyers.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, followed closely by 2015. While it is not quite time for critics’ and pundits’ top 10 lists to come out, commercial real estate brokers are already gathering to discuss how Philadelphia’s market is doing and what the city should expect next year.

South Jersey is doing better, and it may even be doing well. Terrific, however, is a ways off, according to a local commercial real estate broker. We are talking about office space, and research from the broker’s firm shows that Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties seem to be putting more distance between current conditions and the region’s miserable condition during the recession.

Huy Fong Foods Inc. has enjoyed tremendous success since its founder, David Tran, first started producing chili sauces in 1980. The company’s hottest — in every sense of the word — product is by far the Sriracha sauce. Some serious fans we know will leave a restaurant if they do not see “rooster sauce” on the tables.

We are wrapping up our discussion of a case involving payments in lieu of taxes. The original agreement was between a developer whose property straddled the border between two towns and one of those towns. The developer agreed to the PILOTs in return for having access to the town’s public sewer system.

We are still discussing the decision in a federal court case about payments in lieu of taxes. The dispute is in Massachusetts, so the situation is a little different from what we would see here in Philadelphia or across the river in New Jersey. The facts are interesting, though, and there is, perhaps, a lesson for us all as well.

In 1987, a developer decided to build on a parcel that straddled the border between two towns in Massachusetts. One town had a public sewer system, and the other did not. In a commercial development, access to a sewer system can be critical, so the developer and the city with the sewer system — the city of Marlborough — negotiated an agreement that would give the developer the services he needed.