Page 16 - RE-NJ

14 SEPTEMBER 2024
Lou Reynolds is CEO of Reynolds Asset Management, which is spearheading the redevelopment of the Princeton Pike Office Park in Lawrence Township.
FINDING A BALANCE
For Reynolds, right-sizing office space has been key to Lawrence Township redevelopment plan
The planned redevelopment of Princeton Pike Office Park in Lawrence Township will feature the mixed-use elements that are increasingly popular in New Jersey. But, departing from the trend, it will keep half its office space.
Three buildings at 3131 Princeton Pike, now known as CANVAS, will be demolished starting this fall or in early 2025, making way for 204 apartments and 17,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space. That will reduce the office space at the park by nearly 40 percent, to about 167,000 square feet, leaving three buildings that are now thriving and nearly fully leased after a recent makeover.
“Not all office parks can accommodate this sort of revitalization,” said Lou Reynolds, founder and CEO of Reynolds Asset Management, which owns the site. Sometimes “you end up with this weird sort of office park that has an apartment community shoved in the middle — it doesn’t feel residential. This property in particular laid out well.”
Well enough, in fact, that tenants of the to-be-demolished buildings have switched into the remaining buildings and even expanded their space at
the campus, which is just south of Interstate 295 and six miles from downtown Princeton.
Reynolds said CANVAS evolved out of the layout and condition of the property as well as feedback from local officials. That followed his firm’s acquisition of the office park in 2022 alongside Capital Solutions Inc., “primarily because it was distressed and we thought we had a better plan for the property.”
He said two buildings along Princeton Pike “needed to go. They no longer met ADA compliance” and were only 25 percent occupied. A third structure, a vacant company headquarters, wasn’t worth the cost of subdividing for smaller tenants.
The half-full back three buildings, though, were “ideal for renovation.”
Reynolds Asset Management leaned into their midcentury modern look, amplifying elements like a center open staircase, covering exposed brick, installing larger artwork and adding LED lights.
Then the Paramus-based firm offered existing tenants “amazing terms if they were willing to relocate,” Reynolds said. “Some of them were actually looking to leave our property right up until that moment that we approached them with an offer.”
Reynolds noted that much of the new occupancy has been expansion from existing tenants, largely medical users. Princeton Sports and Family Medicine, for instance, and Benecard Services
By Marlaina Cockcroft
Photo by Aaron Houston for Real Estate NJ