Equus Capital Partners has purchased a Fort Washington office building and is planning to demolish the structure and replace it with a $60 million apartment complex, writes Natalie Kostelni for the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Newtown Square-based real estate company acquired the building off Virginia Drive for $5.98 million from ADP. As part of the deal, ADP will lease space in the building on a short-term basis before moving its operations to Maplewood Office Park.

The deal was at least a year in the making, during which time Equus was working on zoning for the property and cleaning up the title.

“It took a long time to work through,” said Steve Spaeder, senior vice president of acquisitions and development at Equus. “By the time we got to this point, it went through as a matter of course.”

The office building is on an almost 14-acre lot, which gives Equus plenty of room to develop Madison Fort Washington, a two-building, 300-unit apartment community. The project will be built in two phases, the first one will be a five-story building with 200 units.

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