As news of and plans for new projects along the waterfront continue to come to light, we often find ourselves wondering what other plans might exist for large and underused parcels situated along the Delaware River. Recently, a reader tipped us off to a proposal for a hotel and marketplace at the Southport Pier, a 120-acre site located just southwest of the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal, below Columbus Blvd and Packer Ave., and extending west to the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It’s a vision to open up Philadelphia’s presence in the global market.

Down here

Huge parcel

The Philadelphia Global Trade Center would feature a 300-room hotel with a 100-room extended stay building, a marketplace for 300-vendors in a 570K sqft building, green space, retail, restaurants and parking. The proposal was released in January and created by a local corporation that uses the same name as the proposal The organization is led by Anthony Bruttaniti of Anthony Bruttaniti Architecture and Design, located in Center City. The project calls for 1.6M sqft of space for parking over four parking garages. When added to the 355K sqft of hotel space, it makes for a total proposal of 2.6M sqft of building space. The proposal suggests, in addition to the founding company, a team of players to develop and fund this proposal that might include the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, as lessee of the land, and the Delaware River Stevedores (DRS).

A warehouse in the area

The authors of this proposal present the site as an opportunity to capitalize on a 2014 project to widen the Delaware River, as well as the ongoing project to widen the Panama Canal, which will allow for increased flow of international goods. The intent is for DRS to develop new relationships, berths, the proposal calls it, to attract some of those international shippers. Cushman & Wakefield estimates the industrial space in the South Jersey and Philadelphia area at nearly 700M sqft, about six percent of the nation’s total capacity, according to the proposal. With the construction of the Southport Pier, the capacity could grow to 12 percent. The Port of Philadelphia and its neighboring ports from New Jersey to Maryland transported a combined 6.7 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent container units) of import and export merchandise in 2011 and 3.7 million total containers (loaded and empty), according to the American Association of Port Authorities.

It’s certainly an interesting vision. We know waterfront proposals can be as viable as wishing for Tinkerbell, but eventually the waterfront, we think will be developed more fully. And this parcel may become of interest, even still if that may be some years from now. At the same time, we think the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, which recently announced it hired a firm to develop a Penn’s Landing redevelopment plan, ought to be part of the conversation. What do you think?

–Lou Mancinelli