75 Chestnut Ridge Road in Montvale – Courtesy: Cushman & Wakefield
By Joshua Burd
A major accounting firm plans to renovate a 60,000-square-foot office building in Montvale after acquiring the property for $5.7 million, Cushman & Wakefield said.
The brokerage, which represented the seller in the deal, declined the name the buyer of 75 Chestnut Ridge Road, but described it as a “Big Four professional services firm.” The building is the former headquarters of Winebow, a wine and spirits distributor, and was sold by a private ownership entity.
The Cushman & Wakefield team included office brokerage specialist Dan Johnsen and Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group members Andrew Merin, David Bernhaut, Gary Gabriel and Brian Whitmer, the firm said in a news release. Jeff Babikian of CBRE represented the buyer.
“Our goal was to sell the property to a user,” Johnsen said. “The buyer is planning to completely renovate the building.”
C&W added that the deal “is significant in that it punctuates the transformation” of the upper Garden State Parkway submarket. Johnsen pointed to success stories such as Memorial Sloan Kettering’s purchase and conversion of the former Teva Pharmaceuticals property in Montvale, along with a rezoning of Chestnut Ridge Road to allow for assisted living.
“A number of properties have come onto the market in recent years, and today we are seeing them renovated and retenanted, or repurposed,” Johnsen said. “This is a changing market.”
