Page 23 - Vol.5 No. 7 July 2021

“We get inquiries from all types ... and everyone’s trying to figure out their internal footprints,” Schultz said. “But I do believe if you buy the right asset at the right price and that you’re able to put the right amount of dollars into it, with the right vision, you will lease that space.
“Is it going to be exactly the rent you thought you were going to get, when you thought you were going to get it? Probably not, but if you have the right situation you usually end up doing OK. And we’re betting that that’s the case.”
Other Jersey City landlords, includ- ing Rob Naso of BentallGreenOak and Mahbod Nia of Mack-Cali Realty
Rob Naso
Moderated by Philip F. McGovern Jr., managing partner of Connell Foley, the panel discussion also featured Aaron Price
of TechUnited and Anthony Cammarata Jr. of Goldman Sachs. Both noted that the concept
of a hybrid
work schedule
developed long
before COVID-19, but is now on the table for many more companies going forward.
“The individual company culture will drive a lot of this,” said Price, the CEO and president of TechUnited, a trade association for technology and life sciences firms. “The tech industry has been ahead of this curve pre- pandemic, varied by company and culture, but it was not uncommon to
have fully remote staff or significantly remote staff in the tech community. I think what the pandemic did here was accelerate the thinking ... to make it safer for others to take a risk and feel like it was OK.”
Cammarata, Goldman’s managing director for real estate and corporate services, noted that “flexibility is not new to us,” adding that “our global workplace standard is based on flexible seating, it’s activity-based working and also based on people having the right tools to do their job when and wherever they are.” That has helped create a smooth transition for the investment bank, which has a significant presence at its landmark 30 Hudson St. tower in Jersey City, ever since it first invited workers back to the office in June 2020.
Schultz believes the pandemic has also allowed small and midsized users to share in the benefits of having a
distributed workforce, having been forced to transition to remote work. That could change their approach to real estate and hiring decisions.
“I think the cloud was the winner
in this pandemic because medium- and small-size companies ... did not have that optionality that the larger companies did have to recruit talent in other places,” he said. “And I think now that we’re all comfortable with this, the entire landscape of tenants now have a chance to be part of that.
“And everyone’s going to do it differently. There’s different industries, different departments within companies that feel they need to collaborate with each other more than not, and then there’s parts of companies that really don’t need
it, so I think the cloud actually was amplified in a way that’s going to allow this to be a trend that sticks with us in the future.” RE
REALESTATENJTM 21
Corp., pointed to the focus on amenity-rich, mixed-use work environments that had become increasingly critical before the pandemic. That approach
Jersey City office buildings such as 30 Montgomery, a 313,000-square-foot office tower renovated and ultimately sold by Onyx Equities and Rubenstein Partners in 2016, have seen an uptick in interest as employers begin to consider their space needs after the pandemic.
goes hand in hand with the optionality sought by employers as they look to draw their teams back to the office.
“I think landlords that can be incredibly flexible are going to
win out in terms of being able
to attract tenants,” said Naso, BentallGreenOak’s co-head of U.S. asset management and a key figure in the company’s $10 million overhaul of its Newport Tower property in Jersey City. The global investment manager is now in the midst of upgrading
the 36-story, 1.1 million-square-foot building at 525 Washington Blvd., which it launched in conjunction with a recent 20-year, 150,000-square-foot lease renewal by French banking giant BNP Paribas.
Philip F. McGovern Jr.
MINNO WASKO
ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS
LAMBERTVILLE, NJ NEWARK, NJ
www.minnowasko.com
Leaders in Mixed-Use, Transit-Oriented, Urban Design and Architecture
Courtesy: Onyx Equities