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PREI will move quickly and has already begun to target major corporations for the former Chester Station, said Marketing Specialist D.J. Metcalf.
Once a tenant is in place, a new office building will go up nearby, to be joined by a sports arena, a live-entertainment venue, a collegiate sailing center, two marinas, restaurants, retail shops and "ultimately, a hotel, when we have built a center of business," said PREI Chief Executive Officer Michael G. O’Neill.
The project, called Rivertown, would include 500 to 600 housing units on about 40 acres fronting Route 291 that PECO does not own. Completion is expected in 2007, O’Neill said.
On the waterfront, PECO will donate seven acres to expand city-owned Barry Bridge Park and keep about 20 acres for its continuing operations.
The parcel slated for redevelopment has absorbed the pollution of a century’s worth of industry by hosting a coke plant, a steel mill, a chemical company, a locomotive plant, and a foundry, Hoy said.
Aside from the oils and coal-tar resins that have seeped into the ground enough to push PECO’s removal costs to an estimated $12 million, the most stunning remnant on the site is the former power station.
Completed in 1918, the Chester Station marked the first expansion of Philadelphia Electric Co., later PECO, outside the city. The plant burned coal and oil until closing around 1980.
Once gutted and refitted with 400,000 square feet of Class A office space, the Gothic stone structure will serve as a not-yet-signed company’s "trophy building," O’Neill said.
"This is the perfect development for this site," said Chester Mayor Dominic F. Pileggi. "It has the potential to be the biggest impact project in the county in the last 100 years."
The power station sits inside a state Keystone Opportunity Zone, making its owner exempt from local property taxes.
Companies located in the opportunity zone also are exempt from state income taxes and other levies as part of the state program to encourage redevelopment of former industrial sites. Chester’s zone, which includes 10 parcels citywide, will be in effect through 2010.
Such tax breaks will let the Wharf at Rivertown compete with the region’s best office buildings because "the cost basis blows them away," O’Neill said. "We’ve got to get people over the perception that Chester’s not a place to do business."
O’Neill said the project will cost $150 million to $300 million and create 3,000 permanent jobs. Public subsidies based on job creation will go to some companies that locate in Rivertown because some of the property lies in Chester’s Enterprise Zone, a separate state program aimed at business development.
PREI remains the owner of Baldwin Towers on Chester Pike in Eddystone, which it redeveloped and opened in 1995. The firm owns 35 buildings, including more than 7 million square feet of office space.
O’Neill said the availability of public transportation, as well as good highways and land for parking, made the Chester riverfront an appealing location for business and homes. Plans call for 500 to 600 rental and for-sale townhouses and apartments, he said.
Chester Economic Development Authority Executive Director David Sciocchetti said talks with Amtrak were ongoing on having the national railroad stop at the city’s transportation center, a SEPTA train stop now undergoing a $7.5 million renovation.
The state Department of Transportation is now acquiring land to widen Route 291 from Franklin Street to the Trainer Borough line, and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission has begun studying the feasibility of an I-95 interchange at Flower Street.
, Sciocchetti said.
