Page 25 - RENJ May 2021 Issue 53

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In March 2020 — not long after the team cleared the site, poured the foundation, put up the steel and started bolting panels to the steel structural members — Profeta received an unsolicited letter of intent from Amazon. His firm would spend the next six months negotiating the lease with the e-commerce giant before ultimately securing a 10-year commitment.
As part of the transaction, Amazon paid Montwards for the existing 260,000-square-foot building in
order to have the latter raze that structure and an additional sum to pave the way for 700 parking spaces for vans, which were added to the project’s original 229 car spaces and 58 truck docks. Profeta added that his Montwards team ran electric wires under the asphalt and installed connections in each van space to prepare for when Amazon converts its fleet to electric power.
“Amazon needs an enormous amount of parking,” Profeta said. “They have to park all the vans overnight and also need an equal number of spots for the van drivers to park their own
personal vehicles.”
And while Profeta said the negotiation with Amazon “was the most extensive, involved leasing exercise I have experienced in my 45- year commercial real estate career,” his dealings with local officials in Columbus were decidedly smooth and simple. He noted that the city is “very pro-business” and has a “one- stop shop” for approvals. To that end, a developer must provide a set of plans for every agency that has jurisdiction over the planning and approval process, giving way to a meeting some two weeks later.
“Any agency that is not present at the ‘one-stop shop’ meeting is deemed
to have given its approval,” Profeta said. “Montwards received complete approval at one meeting in an hour and a half and a building permit.”
That is a far cry from the entitlement process in New Jersey, which he estimated could take between two and five years for a similar project, depending on the municipality.
Still, Profeta now has his sights set on a project in his home state.
Amazon, which leased 300,000 square feet at 510 Sunbury Road, paid developer Montwards LLC for an adjacent 260,000-square-foot warehouse in order to have the latter raze the structure, while also paying an additional sum to pave the way for 700 parking spaces for vans. The spaces were added to the project’s original 229 car spaces and 58 truck docks.
His company has agreed to sell the Columbus property to an institutional buyer for what Profeta describes as
“a relatively low cap rate” and will leverage those proceeds into another like-kind exchange under Section
1031 of the U.S. tax code. Another of Profeta’s entities is now in contract
to buy a site along the New Jersey Turnpike, in Central Jersey, where industrial vacancy has hovered around
record lows in recent years.
Tom Nuara of Resource Realty brokered the sale to Profeta’s firm, which is now in due diligence. Meantime, the municipality has converted the property to a redevelopment area.
(Editor’s note: Paul V. Profeta is the owner and publisher of
Real Estate NJ.) RE
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