Blank Rome law firm signs new 16-year lease at One Logan Square in Philadelphia, but square footage is TBD

The exterior of One Logan Square.

By Natalie Kostelni  – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal

Blank Rome, one of Philadelphia’s largest law firms, has signed a new 16-year lease on space in the Center City building where it currently resides — One Logan Square.

What makes the deal unusual and unprecedented, at least in the Philadelphia market, is how much space the law firm will take hasn’t been determined. “I don’t know,” said Grant S. Palmer, CEO and managing partner at Blank Rome when asked how many square feet the firm will occupy under the new lease.

Palmer isn’t being cagy. Blank Rome currently occupies 196,000 square feet at One Logan and its new lease with Brandywine Realty Trust provides an option for it to contract its space when the new lease takes effect and continue to do so going forward. Most leases are typically negotiated to include options to expand a tenant’s space over time but not this one.

“We can give back space at the beginning of the lease. We know we are going to do that but we don’t have numbers,” Palmer said. “We already have more space than we need.”

There is an undisclosed range of space the firm has committed to but it’s a fraction of what it is currently occupying.

Grant Palmer is managing partner at Blank Rome.
Grant S. Palmer

This year has largely been defined by companies large and small delaying long-term decisions on office leases. The pandemic upended how businesses view and use office space, prompting them to wait and see how to approach their use in the future. Two other Philadelphia law firms, Dechert and Baker Hostettler, are still in the market looking for office space.

For Brandywine, One Logan’s landlord, the lease with Blank Rome helps to stabilize the office building. A representative from Brandywine couldn’t be reached for comment.

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On a Trump-loving island in the Chesapeake, a virus outbreak unites instead of divides

The virus was probably abetted by Tangier’s close ties of kinship and history. But those ties have also given the island its best chance at stopping covid-19′s spread, as residents do everything they can to save the lives of neighbors who are, in many cases, lifelong friends or blood relatives.

A Trump flag on Tangier Island. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

By Peter Jamison, Washington Post

TANGIER, Va. — The news at the dock was bad.

As a handful of masked passengers stepped off the Courtney Thomas, one of the only boats still traveling to and from this remote island in the Chesapeake Bay, Susan Parks looked for the oxygen machine that was scheduled to arrive for her patients. The home-health aide could see it was not among the packages and mail being unloaded. The boat’s captain, Brett Thomas, had another reason to look somber as he stepped off his boat beneath a clear December sky.

“I don’t think Mr. Leon’s doing too well,” he said quietly.

A man walking by looked up.

“He’s had a rough go of it?”

“I think so.”

For eight months, the 450 residents of Tangier Island were spared a single case of coronavirus. Now Leon McMann, 89, a Tangier resident who had still been working on his boat the previous winter, was sick. So were many others.

McMann’s daughter and his son-in-law, Mayor James “Ooker” Eskridge. The physician assistant who runs the island’s sole health clinic. Her husband. School teachers, church elders. Thomas’s grandparents. The young and the old.

Over the centuries, Tangier, separated by 12 miles of water from the mainland, has preserved a unique and quirky heritage. Its residents — conservative, religious and intensely social —speak in a maritime brogue that confounds the ears of outsiders. They are simultaneously threatened by and skeptical of climate change, which scientists say could make the island uninhabitable within the next five decades. Most are fiercely devoted to President Trump, who called Tangier’s mayor to tell him not to worry about rising sea levels.

But they are also fiercely devoted to one another. And after the first infections appeared around Thanksgiving, the islanders reacted in a way that once again sets them apart — and that few would have predicted based on their politics.

Across the United States, the pandemic has divided people. Here it has united them. As Americans elsewhere argue over mask mandates, business closures and vaccines, Tangier has carried out a lockdown stricter than those in many large liberal cities. Face coverings are not only required in public spaces indoors; their use outdoors is widespread.

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Energy Department Awards $6 Million to Develop Training Programs for Professionals Working with New Energy Technologies

From EERE News

Today the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded approximately $6 million to five organizations that will develop training programs for emergency responders, building managers and owners, and other officials interacting with solar energy and storage systems, alternative-fuel vehicles and their chargers, and energy-efficient building technologies.

Led by or working with professional associations, work done through these projects could educate hundreds of thousands of U.S. safety and building workers. These professionals are at the front lines as more solar systems are built, more vehicles run on batteries and nontraditional fuels, and more buildings become “smarter” and more energy-efficient. A well-trained workforce familiar with clean energy will improve safety, expedite permitting, reduce liability and insurance costs, and increase consumer confidence.

“As advanced energy technologies are built across America, firefighters, building managers, mechanics, and other workers have new job responsibilities,” said Daniel R Simmons, Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). “These projects will help them work with new energy technologies safely and effectively.”

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And while NJ taxpayers are distracted by the holidays…


New Jersey Playbook
BY MATT FRIEDMAN
It was one thing to give people a day and a half to digest a dense, nearly 220-page bill that would authorize up to $11.5 billion in corporate tax breaks before holding a committee hearing on it.

But lawmakers took opaqueness to a new level Friday by inserting 140 pages of amendments at that committee hearing and expanding the size of the program by a couple billion dollars.

Today, the Legislature is scheduled to vote on the bill.Gov. Phil Murphy and EDA CEO Tim Sullivan have tried to reassure people that this bill has safeguards against the abuses that plagued the last massive tax break program. And the Murphy administration last night rolled out supportive quotes from a bunch of people. But the rushed legislative process speaks much louder than reassurances or statements of support. There is no deadline New Jersey is up against to pass such a massive bill, but they’re acting as if there is.

Murphy in 2019 launched an investigation that uncovered massive special interest self-dealing and a culture of abuse that accompanied previous tax breaks. For years, the champions of these incentive programs have said the state doesn’t spend any money because it’s revenue it wouldn’t otherwise have. But we now know New Jersey was left giving many companies tax breaks, which they most often sold to other companies, to move to places they already planned to move to, or to stay in places they never really planned to leave. That was revenue the state would have otherwise had as we’re facing down a pandemic that’s cut into tax revenue. A pandemic that led the governor to push $4.5 billion in borrowing.

If this program is as good as they say it is, they could try letting people examine it. But apparently they’re pretty confident Democrats in the Legislature are going to “get to yes” on it.

Related news stories:
After scandal and delays, massive N.J. corporate tax credit bill gets major push, with scant scrutiny
Massive $11.5B business tax break bill quickly advanced by N.J. lawmakers, set for full vote Monday

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How To See Rare ‘Christmas Star’ Over NJ Skies On Winter Solstice

Such a close conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn hasn’t occurred since 1623. The Ursid meteor shower peak coincides with the winter solstice.

By Nicole Rosenthal, Patch Staff
Jupiter and Saturn have been moving closer together in the nighttime sky and will appear as one very bright star over New Jersey on the night of the winter solstice.
Jupiter and Saturn have been moving closer together in the nighttime sky and will appear as one very bright star over New Jersey on the night of the winter solstice. (Michal Kata/Shutterstock)

NEW JERSEY — There’s no question: What happens in the sky the night of the winter solstice is sure to bring some joy in a year when it’s been hard to find in the Garden State.f Jupiter and Saturn will dance in a planetary conjunction, lining up perfectly to create the illusion of a “Christmas star.”null

The two bright planets have been visible in the evening sky for the past several nights as they move closer together, culminating on the night of Dec. 21, the winter solstice.

But if the solstice and the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn aren’t enough to get you outside, the Ursid meteor shower will offer a show of shooting stars at the same time.

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Company plans national anaerobic digestion expansion. Unilever, Starbucks and Dairy Farmers of America sign on

Courtesy of Vanguard Renewables

By Cole Rosengren, WasteDive

Vanguard Renewables, a Massachusetts-based anaerobic digestion company, has launched the Farm Powered Strategic Alliance (FPSA) with the goal of rapidly scaling up organics recycling in the United States. Initial members include Unilever, Starbucks and Dairy Farmers of America (DFA).

The FPSA’s goal is to organize and advocate for best practices around reducing food waste, digesting “unavoidable waste” with animal waste at farm-based sites, and creating and utilizing biogas from the process. 

What is anaerobic digestion? Anaerobic digestion is a sequence of processes by which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen.[1] The process is used for industrial or domestic purposes to manage waste or to produce fuels. — Wikipedia

“It’s a supply agreement and it’s an offtake agreement,” said CEO John Hanselman, noting members signed separate contracts with the company.

Vanguard has seven operational facilities in the Northeast, including a new depackaging facility in Massachusetts with 250 tons per day of capacity. More than 20 new facilities are also in development, with a near-term focus on metro areas around New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

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Vanguard has seen steady growth since it was founded in 2014, with a portfolio of sites across Massachusetts and Vermont, but this latest announcement is a sign of its ambition to have a national footprint.

“Our intent is to take our first mover advantage and really be the premier food waste recycler in the U.S.,” said Hanselman.

Vanguard’s existing operations have seen success by co-locating with farms in a symbiotic relationship. The company gets favorable terms on using the land for its facilities and a steady supply of animal waste to mix with inbound food scraps. The farms get free organic fertilizer and energy for their operations, with the resulting biogas also often being used by local communities in various ways.

While these facilities have become key elements of processing infrastructure in New England, a region known for an array of state and local policies mandating or encouraging organics recycling, Hanselman said there have been other factors limiting their scalability. In his view, separating organics at the generator level has still been viewed as too complicated or time-consuming even among companies that support the concept.

Vanguard’s recently opened depackaging facility in Agawam, Massachusetts – known as an ORF (organics recycling facility) – can handle just about any type of food product unless it’s packaged in glass. While the concept itself is not new, Hanselman described the ORF as an evolutionary step for the industry. Main features include a fully automated and contained process, with a complex air handling system to prevent odors. The ORF also allows Vanguard to create custom blends based on the needs of its digesters throughout the region.

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