Temple has bought a 45,000-square-foot business strip across from the Health Sciences Center’s Kornberg School of Dentistry for $8.2 million, according to property records.
The property includes a Fine Wine & Good Spirits outpost, PNC Bank, Philly Pretzel Factory and Pizza Hut locations and a now-defunct Rite Aid.
“The old Rite Aid could potentially serve as the location for primary care physician services for Temple Health,” a Temple spokesperson for the university wrote in a statement to The Temple News. “The other tenants of the shopping plaza will remain.”
Overbrook Management Corporation built the strip in the early 2000s and put it on the market in 2023. The closure of the Rite Aid spurred Temple to pursue the purchase “aggressively,” the seller told The Philadelphia Business Journal. The entire property is on the 3200 block, on the corner of North Broad and Westmoreland Street.
Local business closures have affected the Temple community in the last year, including the three Rite Aid closures near the campuses, one located on Cecil B. Moore near Broad Street and the other at Broad near Susquehanna. Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy in October 2023 and closed the Main Campus locations in May and June, respectively.
Temple bought multiple properties around Main Campus and HSC in recent years in hopes of revitalizing Broad Street development. Purchases include the 7-Eleven at Broad near Diamond Street in January 2023 and multiple properties on Carlisle Street near Diamond.