$70 Million Plan for Downtown Easton
City Center Investment Corp. is gearing up for its first project outside of downtown Allentown, gaining a key recommendation Tuesday evening for a plan to demolish an aging Easton parking deck to make way for a $70 million mixed-use development that could add hundreds of residents to the city.
The seven-floor, 403,685-square-foot complex, dubbed The Marquis, would replace the Pine Street garage at 27 S. Third St. and include 274 apartments, 6,192 square feet of first-floor retail storefronts along Third Street and a 302-space parking deck to serve residents and the public.
“We’re excited to develop this project and use our experience and expertise from Allentown to benefit another city,” City Center President J.B. Reilly said.
City Center was announced Tuesday at the Easton City Council committee meeting as the preferred developer for the Pine Street garage site, which is between Pine and Ferry streets. From here, City Council will review the committee’s recommendation of City Center before making the final decision, which could happen as soon as council’s Sept. 22 meeting.
City Center, which has invested nearly $800 million in downtown Allentown over the last decade, was one of four developers who responded to a request for proposals Easton issued in March seeking redevelopment proposals for the “functionally obsolete” garage built in 1972. The city’s 21-page request for proposals noted it had no “absolute end-use” in mind, but that it was expected the successful firm would pitch a dense, mixed-use development.
“I think we can all agree that this is one of the most important projects the city will undertake in a decade,” said Diane Haviland, an Easton resident who led the 15-person committee that reviewed proposals for the Pine Street garage site.
On that front, City Center’s proposal fits the bill. While many approvals still have to be attained, construction could start in about a year.
Project details
The Marquis would have 59 studios, 115 one-bedroom apartments, 95 two-bedroom units and five live-work units along Ferry Street. City Center estimates 375-400 people could live in the building, providing a boost to the city’s lineup of restaurants, retailers and the State Theatre. The residential entrance, for one, would be at Third and Pine streets, just a block from Centre Square.
“We think that creating a real urban residential community in Easton, building off what’s already there, is critical to be able to sustain the retail and restaurant activity that we have in downtown Easton,” Reilly told The Morning Call.
Reilly expects the project to appeal to downtown Easton employers such as the Hearst Enthusiast Group, which has more than 75 local employees who will eventually work out of a new office in the revamped Heritage Lanes building on South Third Street. The project also could lure other employers into the city, he said, while the live-work units could attract remote workers.
The plan in Easton is a continuation of what City Center has done in Allentown, where it has completed 10 residential buildings and has four complexes in progress. Once completed, the 14 residential buildings in downtown Allentown will have 1,544 apartment units.
“We’ve been doing this kind of development here in Allentown for a number of years, and we really spent a lot of time visiting and researching other markets where this is popular,” Reilly said, mentioning Raleigh, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, among those places. “We’re thrilled with the residential demand here in downtown Allentown, and that gives us a lot of confidence about going into downtown Easton.”
While it’s a little early to disclose rental prices for The Marquis, Reilly said it should be similar to the pricing structure at City Center’s apartments in Allentown. Those units go for around $1,100-$1,200 a month for a studio, $1,400-$1,500 for a one-bedroom and push $1,800 for the larger units.
“We need to be able to achieve those kinds of rents to support this kind of an investment,” Reilly said.
While City Center has done larger single investments on office and commercial projects, this is one of its higher-priced residential investments. Typically, Reilly said, a City Center residential project runs anywhere from $25 million-$75 million.
“This is on the high end,” he said. “It’s a significant step for City Center. It’s a significant commitment of our capital. We have a finite amount of capital, like any company, and we’re willing to invest that capital into this project in downtown Easton.”
Timeline, parking
If and when Easton City Council confirms City Center as the site’s preferred developer, Reilly said City Center would quickly get into the planning and permitting process. The plan would be for City Center to buy the 1.46-acre garage site, a purchase that is factored into the $70 million project cost.
Reilly said City Center would hope to break ground on The Marquis in fall 2022, kicking off a two-year construction process.
Not breaking ground until next fall would allow construction to wrap up on the in-progress 505-space parking deck on North Fourth Street. Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said Tuesday that parking deck should be complete by late summer 2022.
While City Center’s plan would demolish the 535-space Pine Street garage, Reilly said his company’s development would include 302 parking spaces that could be used by residents and the public.
The project includes two levels of parking on the first and second floors, wrapped along Ferry and Third streets by retail and residential uses.
“It kind of masks the parking,” Reilly said.
He said he would expect at least two-thirds of the residents at The Marquis to work outside of downtown Easton, opening 150-200 parking spaces during the day on weekdays. City Center estimates 25% of residents will leave during the weekends.
“That’s part of our commitment with this project is to make those parking spaces available to the public, whether they’re employees at Crayola, visitors, employees of other businesses,” Reilly said. “There will be a significant amount of parking during the day and even on weekends available for public use.”
Why Easton?
This is the second time City Center has tried to land a project in downtown Easton.
Reilly said City Center submitted a plan in 2019 for the former Days Inn site at 185 S. Third St. The city issued a request for proposals for that site in July 2019, shortly after a plan for a new Da Vinci Science Center complex there collapsed.
Easton ended up selecting Bethlehem’s Peron Development for that 2.96-acre site. Peron bought the site this year for $3.5 million and is planning The Confluence, a mixed-use development with a movie theater, parking and about 250 condos and apartments.
Panto said The Confluence is just one of several residential complexes coming to Easton, all of which help the city grow its tax base and aid in its effort to get back to a population of 35,000 people.
After hearing Reilly speak Tuesday evening, Panto said residential buildings such as The Marquis help the city in its efforts to attract new employers downtown.
“We need a daytime economy,” Panto said.
Just like it did in 2019, Reilly said, City Center feels market-rate residential units with a retail component is the right mix for downtown Easton.
“We’ve continued to believe that, so that’s why we went for this site,” said Reilly, who graduated from Lafayette College in 1983 and said he has kept close ties with the Easton community ever since.
But, Reilly pointed out, just because City Center is moving forward with a project in Easton doesn’t mean it’s becoming lukewarm on its home base of Allentown, where it has been the most prolific developer in the city’s unique Neighborhood Improvement Zone taxing district.
The company has about $300 million in downtown Allentown projects in the planning stages and continues to market a planned office tower, a $100 million, 16-story project called 1 Center Square at the site of the Wells Fargo bank building.
When plans for 1 Center Square were unveiled in December 2019, City Center hoped to start construction in fall 2020. But then a global pandemic hit and that stalled demand for office space. City Center aims to get 50%-60% of an office building leased before starting construction, and many businesses paused those commitments during the pandemic.
While the office market has been in flux, Reilly and City Center have continued to see high demand for apartments in downtown Allentown. Now, he believes he’ll find that same demand in Easton.
“This is a natural progression,” he said, “and we think from a business standpoint, it’s a good investment opportunity for our company.”
Jon Harris
THE MORNING CALL
SEP 07, 2021 AT 7:29 PM
