Positive Signs: Digital Signage Ordinance Lures Tenants

To revitalize urban centers, cities and property owners have tried all sorts of gimmicks to attract desirable tenants. A section of Philadelphia may have finally found a winning pitch, by offering to put tenants’ names in lights.

Market East commercial real estate owners, whose property spans the blocks of Market Street east of City Hall to Independence Mall, in Philadelphia’s Center City neighborhood have struggled in recent years after various plans to attract tenants to the area, including renting space to an indoor amusement park, failed to come to fruition. But now, the once-popular district is garnering attention again after a large new office tenant announced plans to rent space there, attracted by a new sign ordinance that the city passed last summer.

Ordinance Creates ‘Digital District’

The ordinance will allow Philadelphia Media Network, which publishes The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily News and recently signed a lease for 125,000 square feet at the former Strawbridge & Clothier department store building on Market Street and part of the third floor of the adjoining mall, The Gallery, at Market East, to help create a digital district in the Market East section. The ordinance allows developers, in exchange for an investment of at least $10 million, to put up and collect revenue from large digital signs and billboards on the outside of Market Street buildings between Seventh and 13th Streets.

Philadelphia Media Network will be the first business to take advantage of the ordinance, passed last summer, but will have to abide by its limits. For example, the ordinance allows digital signs to appear only on properties that have 100 feet or more of frontage on Market Street. Those who supported the ordinance said that the goal of it is to integrate the signs into the existing architecture, not entirely cover building exteriors, a desired aesthetic in many major city sections like New York City’s Times Square. Still, for Philadelphia Media Network, the prospect of new digital signage was an added attraction of coming to the area, said company representatives, who consider the move to Market East a positive culture change for the very historic, traditional newspaper company.

Change Creates Retail Opportunities

Meanwhile, the developer SSH Real Estate, a Philadelphia-based commercial real estate company, already has a large stake in the Market East neighborhood. In 2008, it helped form a partnership that eventually acquired Girard Square, a set of four buildings that straddle a full city block across the street from The Gallery. Despite a boom in residential and hotel development, new restaurant rows, and a recent expansion of the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Center City’s retail market is still shaky. While some streets, like Walnut and Chestnut, are continuing to draw both national and international retailers, the consensus is that the area could use more mid-price retailers, like Target. SSH and others that have a vested interest in Market East’s revival say that the signage ordinance will show retailers that the area, the last in Center City where desirable space is still available at lower prices, is changing.