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Society Hill Acme that stoked density outcry is listed for sale, along with CVS across the street

The Acme and CVS on Fifth Street are being listed for sale at $15 million and $12.4 million.

The Acme store on Fifth Street in Society Hill.
The Acme store on Fifth Street in Society Hill.Read moreJacob Adelman / Staff

Alterra Property Group is seeking a buyer for the Acme supermarket building in Society Hill that it had wanted to redevelop into a residential mid-rise, as well as for the property across the street that was recently renovated into a CVS pharmacy.

The Acme building on the east side of Fifth Street, between Spruce and Pine, and the CVS on the west side of the street are being listed for sale at $15 million and $12.4 million on the website of Tulsa, Okla.-based real estate brokerage Stan Johnson Co.

Alterra managing partner Leo Addimando said in an email Tuesday that the company periodically sells selected holdings from its portfolio.

“There is some logic in our business to selling and moving on to other projects where further value can be added,” he said. “These tenants now have long-term leases, and I don’t see anything changing at these two sites for decades.”

Efforts by Alterra to redevelop the Acme site in 2017 as a five-story apartment or condo building were opposed by residents of Society Hill who said the building would be out of scale in a neighborhood made up largely of single-family townhouses.

The dispute led to legislation that would apply to subsequent projects, exempting the affluent neighborhood from citywide rules allowing developers to exceed otherwise-permitted height and unit-count limits when their projects have “green” roofs and fresh grocers on their ground floors.

Alterra later abandoned its plans for the Acme site in exchange for an agreement by community members not to oppose an expansion of the supermarket or the redevelopment of the property across the street that then housed a state liquor store, a dry cleaner and other small shops and is now the CVS.

Addimando said Tuesday that Acme officials have given no notice to date that they are ready to move forward with the store’s expansion.

A spokeswoman for Acme’s parent company, Albertsons Companies LLC of Boise, Idaho, did not respond to an email seeking details of the chain’s plans at the site.