There’s no denying the importance of small and midsized deals in the day-to-day life of commercial real estate. It’s also easy to understand the buzz that surrounds a blockbuster lease like the one signed this past spring by PTC Therapeutics, which committed to more than 360,000 square feet at Vision Real Estate Partners’ Warren Corporate Center.
It was all the more notable that it came in a time of uncertainty for office users, amid lingering doubts about how and when to draw employees back to an in-person setting. As PTC’s Doug McLeester noted in early June, the time had come.
“Our new headquarters allows us to have a Class A facility for our growing team, while keeping the new flexible work paradigm in mind,” said McLeester, the biotech firm’s vice president of global facilities. “As PTC grows into one of the world’s leading rare disease companies, our in-house capabilities must similarly grow and adapt.”
The PTC lease is by no means an outlier. As you’ll read in this month’s cover story, the large, high-profile office deal is alive and well in the pandemic’s aftermath, as blue-chip employers make major investments in their physical footprint. That’s evident by several outsized leases in New Jersey this year of 100,000 square feet or greater, and market experts say there are likely more to come, as corporations look to support their growth while creating a “commute-worthy” environment for its distributed workforce.
Our September edition also includes a profile of Alpine Residential and its fast-growing development pipeline in Jersey City. The Manhattan-based firm recently built and quickly leased more than 200 luxury apartments in the city’s historic Bergen-Lafayette neighborhood, with plans for another 800 units there as part of a projected $430 million in residential and commercial development. That includes a major project at the adjacent Liberty Science Center, where it will develop a housing and retail complex known as Scholars Village, as part of a mixed-use plan to transform about 14 acres of adjacent land.
Elsewhere in this edition, we highlight the nonprofit known as HomeWorks Trenton, which serves marginalized high school girls in the city with academic, social and emotional enrichment in a dormitory-style setting. The organization recently purchased a long-vacant, three-story home in the city and is now seeking a $2 million construction loan to rehabilitate and expand the property, where it hopes to create a permanent space that would nearly quadruple its student population and bring its team of educators and administrators under one roof.
You can find those stories and more in the latest edition of Real Estate NJ. I’m happy to say that our coverage of large office deals was just one component of an active summer on the commercial real estate news front. July and August both had stretches of robust, consistent activity that we don’t always see, so here’s hoping that continues as we head into fall.
Until next time, thanks for reading and enjoy the issue!
Joshua Burd
Editor
josh@re-nj.com
