Pennsylvania created its C-PACE program in 2018. Nothing placed through it came close to $60 million until Harper Square closed in November 2025.
Project Scope
Pearl Properties is building a tower of more than 500 feet at 113-19 S. 19th Street, between Sansom and Chestnut, half a mile from City Hall. It will hold 267 apartments, and about 75 percent of those units get private balconies, which is not typical for a Philadelphia rental building at this height. Views run over Rittenhouse Square and Center City.
DAS Architects is the designer. The tower incorporates existing historic buildings into its base, and earlier approved plans totaled 267,874 gross square feet including roughly 30,180 sq ft of commercial space. Demolition on the site started in April 2024. Sitework for the tower itself began in mid-December 2025, with delivery targeted for spring 2028.
The building takes its name from The Harper, Pearl’s 167-unit, 24-story tower completed across the street in 2018 and 2019.
Why It Matters
The capital stack is why this project is moving while comparable Center City towers aren’t. Pearl closed $173 million in November 2025: a $113 million construction loan from Barings plus $60 million in C-PACE financing from Counterpointe Sustainable Real Estate, administered through the Philadelphia Energy Authority. Counterpointe CEO Eric Alini called it the largest C-PACE loan ever placed in Pennsylvania.
C-PACE at that scale changes the math on a tall rental building. It’s long-tenor, fixed-rate capital repaid through a property assessment, and it filled a gap that would otherwise have needed mezzanine debt or more equity at a moment when neither was cheap.
The market context is less encouraging. CBRE put Center City multifamily vacancy at 5.3 percent in the third quarter of 2025, the highest of any Philadelphia submarket against a 3.4 percent regional average, with 3,480 units delivered in the trailing twelve months. Pearl is betting that top-of-market product with balconies on three quarters of the units competes in a different pool than the deliveries driving that number.
One thing to watch: the unit count grew from 215 in the 2021 through 2024 permit era to 267 in the financed scheme, and reported floor counts have ranged from 45 to 54 across revisions. Height and unit count are the figures the current financing coverage agrees on.
Project Team & Details
| Developer | Pearl Properties |
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| Owner / Client | Pearl Properties |
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| Architect | DAS Architects |
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| Consultants | Counterpointe Sustainable Real Estate (C-PACE Capital)
Philadelphia Energy Authority (C-PACE Administration) |
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| Status | Under Construction |
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| Funding Source | Private |
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