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10,000-square-foot rooftop deck that will treat tenants to uninterrupted views of Manhattan.
The company, meantime, will look to refresh the distinctive atrium between buildings 2 and 3, as it looks to build on the multimillion- dollar upgrades that were initiated roughly seven years ago by Mack- Cali Realty Corp., Veris Residentials’ predecessor. Admittedly, those plans were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Karasick said, but he believes the former owners had “the right concept, which is to create
an atmosphere, an environment, a collaborative office feel.”
“I think they had the right idea to create an inviting and dramatic space as you enter the property,”
he said, noting that the complex
is a converted former railroad warehouse built nearly a century ago. “But the next piece of the puzzle, which has not been solved, is creating an amenity set.”
He added that “we believe Harborside will become the hub
for all of Jersey City.” Central to
that effort will be the addition of new restaurant concepts by Green Group LLC, the operator of 1776
by David Burke in Morristown, which has helped activate the ground floor of a well-known office building downtown. 601W has signed a 45,000-square-foot lease with
the hospitality group, which will bring two to three new restaurant concepts and a Topgolf location to Harborside as a step beyond the complex’s existing food hall.
“That’s bringing something important to the community by bringing upscale dining,” Karasick said. “There’s no upscale dining right
now and, more importantly, it’s a nighttime and weekend option. 1776 in Morristown made that office building a 24/7 destination.”
The complex has fielded plenty of interest in the meantime. 601W and its leasing team with CBRE have hosted nearly 2 million square feet
of tours since going under contract. That includes “two exceptional prospective tenants” that have walked Harborside 1 and “are intrigued by its vast potential as their respective headquarters,” he said. Notably, the nearly 438,000-square- foot space recently underwent a $157 million upgrade launched under Mack-Cali, but is completely vacant
after the collapse of a full-building lease with Amazon in 2021.
The structure, previously the longtime home of Deutsche Bank, now has a new exterior skin and floor-to-ceiling windows throughout.
“We’ve studied and looked at Jersey City,” Karasick said. “I think, if you’ve been around for a long time, sometimes you have to unlearn Jersey City. Until 2012, it was a
back office for the banks. And then from 2012 until now, it’s completely transformed itself. It’s become a primary destination just four minutes from Manhattan by both the PATH train and ferry.”
601W has already proved its grit by simply closing on its acquisition, which took six months from when
it went under contract. Brokers
with both CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield, which jointly represented Veris in the sale, cited the difficulty of securing both debt and equity for such a large transaction — all of
it amid a near-freeze in the capital markets and in a time of major uncertainty for office space.
“This kind of deal just doesn’t happen quickly in a volatile
Jeff Dunne
environment,” Jeff Dunne, a vice chairman with CBRE and member of the brokerage team, said during an interview after the closing in early April. Yet
he pointed to the buyer’s ability to raise equity and its “credibility with the lending community to get the debt done.”
He added: “What it takes to get a deal of this nature done in today’s world is good teamwork, and I think we had a very good buyer and seller that wanted to get it done.”
601W has built its track record
over nearly three decades. The
firm’s success stories include the
2.3 million-square-foot Starrett- Lehigh Building at 601 West 26th
St. in Manhattan’s West Chelsea neighborhood — the source of the company’s name — which it acquired in 1998 for nearly $152 million. The former manufacturing building was 50 percent vacant at the time, but grew to 98 percent over the next 13 years after 601W’s massive overhaul