200 Cottontail Lane in Somerset — Courtesy: CBRE
By Joshua Burd
Another aging New Jersey office property could soon become industrial space, following a developer’s purchase of a 15-acre site in Franklin Township for nearly $31 million.
According to CBRE, which brokered the sale, the parcel at 200 Cottontail Lane in Somerset is currently home to a 209,000-square-foot office building constructed in 1986. The undisclosed buyer now plans to build a modern warehouse and distribution center in its place, capitalizing on its location near Interstate 287 and in one of the state’s fastest-growing industrial submarkets.
The CBRE’s Investment Properties team of Mark Silverman, Elli Klapper, Charles Berger and Jeremy Wernick, in conjunction with Kevin Dudley of the firm’s Industrial and Logistics Group, represented the purchaser in the $30.75 million deal. The size of the planned industrial project was not immediately available.
“This is one of the numerous off-market deals we have been involved in in the Somerset area in the past few years,” Silverman said. “There continues to be significant interest in industrial repositioning due to the supply chain pipeline issues being seen worldwide and lack of developable industrial land in New Jersey. We had to move quickly to secure this property for our client, who is excited to develop a high-quality warehouse facility in an extremely tight industrial market.”
In announcing the deal, CBRE said the buyer has amassed a development pipeline of more than $5.6 billion and more than 3,000 properties across top U.S. logistics market. Its purchase of 200 Cottontail Lane follows a spike in vacancy at the property in recent years that was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the site became a prime candidate for redevelopment with Franklin’s rezoning of its corporate business district.
“Having had knowledge of the impending zoning change within Franklin Township months before it took effect, we were able to source several opportunities for our client in Somerset and the surrounding area,” Klapper said. “The emergence of the 287 corridor as one of New Jersey’s new premier industrial submarkets is something that we are proud to be a part of.”
