Could project to convert offices to apartments remake the ‘center of downtown’ Allentown?

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A Lehigh Valley native hopes to convert most of an eight-story office building into more than 100 “high-end” apartments, and, in doing so, make it the new center of downtown Allentown.

Though the project will cost about $20 million, the building’s first residents could move in as early as next spring, according to developer Don Wenner, founder and chief executive officer of DLP Capital.

• DLP Capital recently announced its plans to turn five of the eight floors at 835 W Hamilton St. into 118 apartments
• DLP Founder and Chief Executive Officer Don Wenner said he thinks the project could make the property the new center of downtown Allentown
• The Dream Grand Plaza’s first apartments could be ready within 10 months, Wenner said

Wenner announced plans last month to transform the mostly vacant office building at 835 Hamilton St. into one of Allentown’s premier housing complexes, to be known as the Dream Grand Plaza.

The developer said the building seemed to be the “natural center of downtown” Allentown when it opened in 2005, several years before the city’s Neighborhood Improvement Zone was created to spark redevelopment in the area.

Many of the first NIZ projects breathed new life into the area around the Soldiers and Sailors monument, just east of the proposed Dream Grand Plaza. Those projects included the 10,000-person-capacity PPL Center, One City Center and Two City Center.

“At the moment, you could say Seventh and Hamilton … is maybe the center” of downtown Allentown, Wenner said. “But there's no space there, and it's tight. … It's very busy there at that circle.”

The Dream Grand Plaza property offers “really the only big, open space along Hamilton to have activities,” Wenner said.

“So I just think this is really well-positioned to be a huge part of the downtown district," he said.

With a ground-floor restaurant in the building and the new Da Vinci Science Center set to open next door in 2024, the 800 block of Hamilton “will become the center again” of downtown Allentown, Wenner said.

A potential project to convert the iconic, 24-story PPL Tower into housing — as proposed by Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk — also could help reshape the area near Ninth and Hamilton streets.

'A really awesome opportunity'

The eight-story office complex was built in the early 2000s and had several owners over the next two decades, during which large parts of the building sat vacant.

The property was known as the PPL Plaza, as Talen Energy — a division of the company — occupied it until 2018. A New York City investment firm bought the building a year later, according to a report by Allentown employees.

The property was back on the market two years later, prompting Wenner’s interest.

“We immediately went out and inspected it and evaluated it, and we thought, ‘Wow, this could be a really awesome opportunity to be a part of the revitalization of Allentown,’” Wenner said.

Wenner bought the Class A office building — which offers almost 255,000 square feet of floor space — for $15.3 million during a public auction in 2021. He since has moved DLP Capital and its “80 or so” employees into the building.

He said he “didn’t have an exact plan” for the building when he bought it and worked to bring in several companies — including PPL, which in May announced plans to vacate its longtime tower — to fill office space.

“Those options didn’t work out,” leading the company to reconsider “what downtown needs,” Wenner said.

"It doesn't need more office space," he said. "There’s lots of office space. What it needs are more people living there.”

He said downtown Allentown still is “pretty dead” on evenings and weekends.

'Higher-end' apartments

Crews built the complex at 835 Hamilton St. as a “super high-end, LEED-certified, really gorgeous, no-expense spared kind of building,” Wenner said.

That means it’s “very different construction, very different quality than you'd build for an apartment” complex, he said.

Buying the building at public auction meant the company “could justify” the project to convert five floors of offices into 118 apartments, Wenner said.

But the project will “still be very, very expensive,” he said, ballparking it at about $20 million — more than he paid for the building.

DLP wants to convert about 168,000 square feet, or about two-thirds of the building, from offices to 118 apartments, according to plans presented July 12 to Allentown officials.

Marketing for the property shows the first floor has space for a cafe, restaurant or retail store, and an office or bank branch. Apartments would fill the next five floors, with offices on the top two floors.

About 60 percent of the 118 planned apartments — 71 — would be one-bedroom units, while the building also would offer two dozen two-bedroom units and 23 studio apartments.

Rents for those units would range from the low $1,000s to low $2000s, Wenner said — prices he said are “very much in line, based on size, with everything else” in downtown Allentown.

Tenants will get a “much nicer, higher-end product for the same rent per square foot” as many other complexes in the city, he said.

Wenner said the building’s first apartments could be ready within 10 months, meaning Dream Grand Plaza could have its first tenants by the start of next summer.

The project is part of a budding trend of planned or suggested office-to-residential conversions in Allentown.

Developer Bruce Loch is seeking permission to fill a planned 33-story building with apartments instead of offices, as was approved eight years ago.

Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk has said he will push for a developer to convert the 24-story PPL Tower into housing after the corporation moves its offices a few blocks east this year.