Philadelphia Apartments Offered Amenities and Coworking Space at the Right Time

The Broadridge Apartments in Philadelphia, a full-block, mixed-use, complex, packed an acre of usable outdoor space into a 478-unit residential development, along with creative amenities that proved to be pandemic must-haves — including an on-site coworking facility — and it reached nearly full lease-out in 10 months.

With street frontage that blended apartments into townhouse-styled facades and a ground-floor grocery anchor, the Broadridge building is a neighborhood success story. After buying out the fund that brought them on as partners and taking over the project in 2017, developer RAL Cos. & Affiliates of New York sought to combine external aesthetics and creative amenities to help Broadridge buck pandemic trends that saw luxury vacancies spike in Center City Philadelphia.

Packing in perks: The 625,000-square-foot development includes coworking space, as well as conference room and podcast recording studios, completely sound-proofed and in some cases large enough for small bands to record music. To maximize outdoor space, where the building narrows at the fourth floor, the large surrounding rooftop is extensively landscaped to include a pool, grassy space, a pet run, outdoor yoga space, a pool, grills and a bocce court. Indoor amenities include an industrial kitchen, auxiliary laundry space, a pet spa and a pool-facing cabana.

RAL Managing Director Josh Wein described the decision to integrate work-from-home amenities as a pre-pandemic choice that happened to work out extremely well. “It was a combination of luck and foresight," Wein said. “Obviously, once COVID hit, it was a huge selling factor.”

A series of firsts: RAL prides itself on amenity choices, but where others have featured recreation-oriented amenities such as game rooms or golf simulators, this was the developer's first building with coworking and creative spaces, Wein said: “It's definitely the first one we’ve put a sound studio in.”