Comcast Expands in Philadelphia

by Natalie Kostelni
"Comcast Corp. has taken an additional chunk of office space at Three Logan Square in Center City.

The cable giant leased three more floors at 1717 Arch St. and occupies five floors and roughly 100,000 square feet in the building, which is situated nearly across the street from its headquarters at 1701 John F. Kennedy Blvd.

This is the third time in just over a year that Comcast has expanded. In August 2010, it leased 43,000 square feet at 1717 Arch. Comcast grabbed another 90,000 square feet at Centre Square late last year. In its latest expansion at 1717 Arch, it added roughly 60,000 square feet of space. It now has about 200,000 square feet of space outside of its headquarters.
“They went from 450,000 square feet in Centre Square to 1.3 million square feet. They have more than doubled over the last five years. This is a company that has grown by leaps and bounds.”

The company was initially supposed to occupy 534,000 square feet at Comcast Center but later added in 2005 another 338,000 square feet while the building was under construction.

But for pockets here and there, the company occupies most of Comcast Center, a 1.2 million-square-foot building, and doesn’t have room to take additional space in the tower. Though it expanded its downtown footprint before its acquisition of NBCUniversal, it has continued to grow.

Comcast leased the additional space at Three Logan because it is considering having some teams who require contiguous space locate there, said John Demming, spokesman at Comcast. While it has some room at its headquarters, it doesn’t have any contiguous blocks of space that would accommodate those departments.

The company’s growth does not yet translate into new construction.

Comcast owns a small parcel adjacent to Comcast Center and earlier this year an entity affiliated with Liberty Property Trust, which developed Comcast Center, bought a surface lot at 18th and Arch streets that many in the commercial real estate community believe is being eyed for another tower for Comcast.

On the heels of Reed Smith signing a 115,000-square-foot lease (full story: http://tinyurl.com/76mx8m7)

 in the building combined with the Comcast lease and other deals, Three Logan continues to attract tenants. In a statement put out last week by Brandywine Realty Trust, which owns Three Logan, the company said it completed five leases in recent months at the building totaling 224,426 square feet and 462,236 square feet through the beginning of the month. All of that activity brought the occupancy of the tower to 88 percent. The company said its “leasing pipeline continues to be very strong with several additional transactions in advanced stages of negotiation” at the building. The firms taking up the most space at the building are Reed Smith with 115,000 square feet, Janney Montgomery Scott with 146,321 square feet (full story: http://tinyurl.com/74ymoht)  and Comcast with roughly 100,000 square feet."

Full story: http://tinyurl.com/7aoyg77
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