Bridge Industrial joined Perth Amboy city officials on Monday, June 16, to mark the opening of a two-building, 1.24 million-square-foot logistics and distribution center known as BridgePort II.
By Joshua Burd
Bridge Industrial has taken the reins of a high-profile, long-awaited redevelopment project in Perth Amboy, extending the firm’s more-than-decade-long partnership with the municipality.
Jeff Milanaik, who leads Bridge’s Northeast team, said Monday that the company had closed on the 44-acre parcel bounded by the Route 35 Victory Bridge to the west, Riverview Drive to the south and parts of Smith Street and Market Street to the north. That places it at the helm of a property that is slated for more than 470,000 square feet of new warehouse space, recreation and open space and pad-ready construction sites, part of the so-called Gateway site that city officials have long sought to remediate and revitalize.
The developer announced the news during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for BridgePort II, a two-building, 1.24 million-square-foot logistics and distribution center project on State Street that has transformed 73 acres once owned by the American Smelting and Refining Co.
“I’m proud to say that our relationship with Perth Amboy will be continuing after this project,” said Milanaik, Bridge Industrial’s Northeast region partner. He noted that the firm acquired the Gateway parcel earlier this month from Denver-based Viridian Partners, which had been spearheading the project under a pact with the Perth Amboy Redevelopment Agency.
As part of the plan, Bridge will remediate some nine acres near the Smith Street business corridor and prepare pad sites to be turned over to the city for potential mixed-use development. The firm will also clean up and redevelop another nine acres near Market Street as park space with access to the waterfront, which will be given to the city, along with developing a new 471,000-square-foot warehouse accessible to trucks from Riverview Drive.
“That warehouse is key to be able to generate the revenue to do the other parts,” Milanaik said.
Monday’s ceremony highlighted Bridge’s latest success story in Perth Amboy, BridgePort II, coming just over two years after Milanaik’s team joined city officials to break ground on the project. One of the two new warehouses, a 243,600-square-foot facility at 1130 State St., is fully leased to JCR Logistics Inc. and Brix Logistics Services LLC, while the firm continues to market some 800,000 square feet at the adjacent building at 1160 State St.
The project also follows Bridge’s initial foray into the city, a highly touted development that spanned 1.3 million square feet across three buildings and attracted high-profile tenants such as Target. That also required an extensive environmental cleanup at a legacy, 103-acre industrial site, as city officials noted on Monday while touting the new revenue and other benefits that come from redevelopment.
“This is not just about warehouses,” Mayor Helmin Caba said. “It’s about people, jobs, health, safety and the community.”
Like Milanaik, Caba noted that the historic manufacturing district is both on the outskirts of the municipality and next to major highways such as Route 440, features that are all too conducive to new warehouse development.
“That’s where they make sense,” Caba said, “and it’s a big benefit to the city because we’re remediating those contaminated lands, building warehouses on those contaminated lands, which equate to more jobs and more revenue for the city of Perth Amboy, and a cleaner safer city.”
The mayor also praised officials with the Perth Amboy Redevelopment Agency, the city council and the state Department of Environmental Protection for their roles, echoing Milanaik’s comments that the projects are “a true testament” to the support of the city, county and state officials and a willingness to work with the private sector.
“These sites are not simple to put together,” Milanaik said, later adding: “We did make a very big bet here, but we bet on it because we have the confidence in what it was.”
Bridge Industrial breaks ground on 1 million sq. ft. Perth Amboy logistics campus
