Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Real Estate Law Blog

Without admitting any wrongdoing, Wells Fargo Bank N.A. has entered into a settlement agreement with the National Fair Housing Alliance. The NFHA filed the complaint against the lender in April 2012, alleging discrimination in the maintenance and marketing of real estate owned properties. Similar actions against U.S. Bank and Bank of America are still pending.

People who live in Philadelphia are likely to be familiar with the Kensington neighborhood. For quite some time, it’s been known as a “tough” area. However, a fresh round of real estate development is beginning to turn that reputation around. This slow — but visible — change has many people living in the neighborhood excited about the future.

Lower Pottsgrove and other towns in Montgomery County are in a pushmi-pullyu relationship with residential and commercial real estate developers. As much as officials want housing, shops and offices in place of vacant land, they want new developments to bring in, not chew up, tax dollars.

This post will conclude our discussion about the Philadelphia School District’s plans to sell, repurpose or raze some 23 school buildings. In many cases, residents and businesses surrounding the shuttered sites have fought hard to keep the schools open. A combination of economics, dwindling population and deteriorating sites, though, have forced the district to close the buildings and move on.

We are continuing our discussion from our last post about the challenges ahead for the Philadelphia School District and the 23 school buildings the district will close over the summer. A number of factors drove the decisions, including population loss in the district, competition from charter schools, funding shortfalls and conditions of the sites themselves.

The Philadelphia School District has completed the difficult process of identifying which of its buildings will close its doors permanently over the summer. The process was fairly contentious, with residents and businesses fighting hard to keep their own neighborhoods’ school open. In the end, officials decided on 23 sites to shutter.

Subaru of America Inc. is looking for a new North American headquarters site, and the real estate buzz is that Philadelphia’s Navy Yard is under consideration. The automaker has been in its current Cherry Hills, New Jersey, building since 1986.

On Thursday, the City of Philadelphia will be releasing a development plan for six miles along the lower Schuylkill. The area, which accounts for 68 percent of the city’s underused and vacant industrial land, has been identified as ripe for new roads, green space, walking and bicycle paths, and especially for industrial and commercial uses that will generate new jobs.

Adaptive reuse of real property can be a challenge, but it is a challenge that many developers look forward to taking on.

South Main Plaza, L.P., a developer looking to build a shopping center in Wilkes-Barre, has filed a lawsuit in Luzerne County, accusing the city and Mayor Thomas Leighton of preventing its ability to move the project forward by hindering its ability to acquire potential tenants.