Fill This Front: 1900 Arch

1900 Arch Street, Suite 102

I guess if you want to name your store/restaurant PARKING you won't have to change the sign.

           Ok, I gave this one some time, but for fuck's sake, if you're going to build this little dinky disappointing shitbird of an apartment building on a lot that should have a fucking supertall skyscraper on it, you might as well get some nice retail on the street level! Nonetheless, this shit has been available for over a year and still can't get filled. What the fuck is going on here? Let's FILL THIS FRONT!
           So in case you've been under a rock for the past couple of years, there's been a lot of goings-on in the development world at 19th and Arch Streets. A few years ago, PMC Property Group, longtime student-ghetto and aging apartment building operator/manager (read their awesome reviews along with some more here and here and here and here) decided that they should get into the game of actually building their own shit instead of poorly managing (again, according to the reviews which you can read even more of here and here and here) or rehabbing existing properties.
         And shit is what they did build. Everyone was excited when they were going to re-do the old AAA Building into apartments, but the result ended up being even uglier and more boring looking than the original. After people started living there for awhile, they complained about the shoddy construction and shitty management. However, at least they were able to get the storefronts filled with some half-decent stuff so the rest of us who don't live there would at least get something out of the street level experience.
          While that ass-scraper was starting construction, PMC teamed-up with EB Realty to develop a new apartment building at the long-derelict southwest corner of 19th and Arch Streets. It was to be a miniscule building much smaller than other midrises to the south and northeast... I know they couldn't have possibly known about the Comcast Innovation and Technology Center's coming to the lot across the street AND there was a shitty real estate market at the time, but even so, the building is too damn short for the area.
          Right after groundbreaking, some legal shit ensued and EB Realty was no longer involved with the project. Once completed in April 2014, the two retail spaces on the ground floor of what ended up being a plastic-facaded-looking little building anyone could probably knock over if they kicked hard enough went up for lease. Oh, and the apartments above started getting almost the same exact reviews as 2040 Market. I must say the lobby, courtyard, roofdeck, and gym look pretty nice though.
          Maybe I'm being a little hard on PMC. After all, their two new builds were done during a shitty time for real estate across America. They are currently on deck to do some more new shit-- they are currently building One Water Street which isn't exactly getting my hopes up, but at least is new construction on the waterfront. They are also the ones that will re-do the Marketplace Design Center, and they just bought one of Richard Basciano's 1903-built slum properties next door. Hopefully, they'll do it right this time.
           The two retail spaces on the ground floor of 1900 Arch are 7,000 sq ft and 4,300 sq ft. The 7,000 sq ft one faces a long stretch of Arch Street and is integral to giving this building the ability to make up for its crappy look by engaging the street level so no one will notice-- therefore let's just focus on that one getting filled right now.

Rendering of the storefront in 2013 with translucent walls behind the display windows and a generic "CAFE" sign.

               This is a 7,000 square foot space with 137 goddamn feet of street frontage along Arch Street and another 21 ft facing 19th. Not enough? There's another 77 feet of frontage along the courtyard of the building itself. There are 234 apartment units above with a whole bunch more about to come online with the addition of 1924 Arch along the back of this building. Literally hundreds of thousands of people work every day in the surrounding buildings and another tens of thousands live nearby. This location is accessible by nearly every form of public transportation in the whole city, there's not reason to go through it all.

The courtyard side of the space.

               If that's not enough for you because at this point you must be nuts, the tallest goddamn building in the entire city that includes a motherfucking high-end-ass hotel is being built across the street and after that, the same developer is eyeing up the corner across the other street for another big-ass building in the future. That means that if you can stick it out at this storefront for awhile, you'll have access to even more thousands of potential customers. The place rents for $315,000-$420,000/yr which seems a bit high for me, but what do I know? Its been empty long enough that you could probably talk them down on the price a bit, right? Anyway, here's the listing on Loopnet via Precision Realty Group--be the one that will FILL THIS FRONT.

The big motherfucker going up on the opposite corner.

 UPDATE: Jacob Cooper from MSC Retail tells me that the space is now leased!! Thanks for the info, Jacob!