The site of what was once the largest oil refinery on the East Coast has officially entered a new stage of its evolution. Construction of the first warehouse on the site has started, with concrete panels already erected and structural steel construction scheduled to start later this month. Developers estimate the more than 300,000-square-foot building will be finished by the end of 2024. Parts of the 1,300-acre site along the Schuylkill River in South and Southwest Philadelphia had been used for petroleum-related industry since the Civil War era. The soil and groundwater beneath the site are contaminated. Both Hilco Redevelopment Partners (HRP) and Evergreen — an affiliate of former owner Sunoco — are responsible for remediating the site. Hilco bought the site in 2020 for $225 million, and since then has largely demolished its jungle of tanks, pipes and buildings and begun preparing the site for construction. HRP plans to build a logistics campus as well as a manufacturing and research and development hub called The Bellwether District at the South Philly portion of the site, with a combined roughly 14 million square feet of building space. The second, 700,000-square-foot-plus building in the logistics portion of the site is also expected to start vertical construction this year. Much of the South Philly site is in the 100-year and 500-year floodplains, so HRP is using soil from higher elevation areas of the site to raise the low-lying areas.
Source: PlanPhilly; 4/17/2024