PhillyDeals: Are more towers on the horizon?

Liberty Property Trust plans to spend $900 million putting up Comcast's second tower over the next three years. That works out to about $600 a square foot to build.

Last week, the owners of 2.0 University Place, a year-old green-roofed building west of the Drexel campus, put it up for sale at $46 million, or $469 a square foot.

That's not quite as much as the Comcast tower - but roughly three times what the city's dominant landlord, Brandywine Realty Trust, was paying for central Philadelphia office towers just a few years back.

When the price of existing buildings approaches the cost of new construction, that can get builders and civic boosters excited. How long until someone decides it makes sense to build more office towers?

At least in University City, where rents landlords are asking for Class A office buildings averaged $44.88 per square foot, highest in the Philadelphia area.

The regional average is $27.51, a couple bucks higher in Center City, mostly lower in the suburbs, according to NGKF, the broker offering 2.0 University Place for sale.

With Drexel University, Penn Medicine, and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia all expanding, with new apartment towers crowding Market Street, the office vacancy rate in the neighborhood was reported under 6 percent, less than half the rate for any neighborhood in Center City, and just a third of what's empty in some suburban markets.

But on the other side of the Schuylkill, the data and the prospects aren't so good, says Glenn D. Blumenfeld of tenant broker Tactix.

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PhillyDeals: Are more towers on the horizon?