New retail space to add to U. City's scores of stores

A new apartment building opening means new retail options for Penn students and the community.

Domus, which is opening its doors at 34th and Chestnut streets to residents this fall, has confirmed four of the five retailers that will occupy its ground floor.

Moving in will be a Starbucks, a T-Mobile store, an Eastern Mountain Sports store and a casual restaurant.

A Wachovia branch opened in the development on Aug. 20.

EMS will be vacating its spot on 36th Street to a larger space in Domus, while Starbucks will keep its location at 34th and Walnut streets open.

Penn and the Domus developer, Hanover Development Co., are in negotiations with several possible tenants to fill the restaurant space.

EMS is relocating because it wants to offer a "larger breath and depth" to customers, manager Adam Pflug said.

Its current space is about 7,500 square feet large, while the Domus store will feature between 10,000 and 12,000 square feet of retail space; Pflug says the store plans to use the extra area to add road bikes and snowboards to its product line.

EMS is closing its current location Sunday and is planning to reopen at Domus in early October.

Starbucks is aiming to open Sept. 22 but may delay that date a few days, said Ed Datz, Penn's executive director of real estate.

Taken together, these new retail opportunities represent a move toward the University's goal of providing more upscale options to mix in with the mom-and-pop operations on campus, Datz said.

Though Datz said the relationship between Hanover, which actually leases the property to retailers, and Penn hasn't been "as close as we hoped," he did say that the retail options at Domus are meant to appeal to the residents of the luxury apartment building, as well as Penn students living in King's Court/English House and people staying at the University City Sheraton.

Datz called this a "more targeted approach specific to the complex and the overall community" because the residence isn't located on a major commercial corridor like the Radian apartment complex on the 3900 block of Walnut Street.

And the businesses that chose to lease from Domus represent the changing face of University City, as Wachovia's presence attests.

Wachovia spokeswoman Barbara Nate said University City "offers a lot of opportunities," not only because college students will hopefully frequent the branch, but also because of the influx of people and businesses the area expects to see because of the development of the postal lands and residences like Domus.

Though the bank isn't planning on other major branch openings in Philadelphia in the near future, Nate said the bank's absence from the neighborhood "was a hole in our network."

The area "offers a really good mix of potential customers," she said.

Calls to the real estate broker hired by Hanover were not returned.

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