SEER Interactive to leave the ‘Search Church’ in mid-2015

Wave goodbye to what we once called the coolest office in Philadelphia.

After three years in its trademark headquarters, online marketing agency SEER Interactive is leaving the “Search Church” so its 80-person Philadelphia team can all be under one roof.

The company will make the move in mid-2015, said CEO Wil Reynolds, and take anywhere from one to three floors in the nearby Rialto at the Piazza in Northern Liberties, where about 30 SEER employees already work. The company opened the Rialto office in the summer of 2012 because it was outgrowing the Church.

About 40 work out of the Search Church right now.

The new SEER offices will include an event space, like the Church did, Reynolds said.

Bart Blatstein, who developed and formerly owned the Piazza, renovated the Search Church — so called because it used to be a church — at 1028 N. 3rd St. for SEER in 2011. At the time, SEER was leasing another Blatstein property but grew out of it faster than expected (the company signed a five-year lease and broke it in 14 months, as Reynolds tells it). The Church was the one Northern Liberties property that could fit the 30-person team, Reynolds said.

Before the Church was renovated, it sat vacant and dilapidated.

“There was literal excrement everywhere,” Reynolds told us.

Meanwhile, the new owners of the Search Church are trying to turn the top floor into a residential apartment, according to PhillyLiving. (Reynolds confirmed that SEER is not behind these renovations, as the story appears to suggest.) Blatstein’s Tower Investments sold the property this summer to an LLC linked to development company Barzilay Development, according to city records. Barzilay is known for converting properties into apartments, according to this Inquirer story that alludes to Barzilay’s plans to convert a Northern Liberties church.