1000 Harbor Blvd. in Weehawken — Photo by Aaron Houston for Real Estate NJ
By Joshua Burd
Hartz Mountain Industries has sold the larger of two buildings at its well-known, 1 million-square-foot office complex in Weehawken, the longtime home of UBS Financial Services.
According to sources familiar with the deal, a joint venture of Wharton Properties and KTB Securities paid $219 million for the 617,187-square-foot property at 1000 Harbor Blvd. The deal closed in early December, as first reported by PincusCo, marking the trade of an asset that Hartz has owned since it developed the waterfront office complex in the late 1980s.
The building is fully leased to UBS through 2035. The sale to Wharton and KTB does not include the adjoining 370,000-square-foot building, 1200 Harbor Blvd., where UBS also occupies more than 100,000 square feet.
Brokerage teams led by CBRE’s Jeff Dunne and Cushman & Wakefield’s Andy Merin represented Hartz in the sale. Representatives for Hartz, Wharton Properties and both brokerage firms declined to comment or did not immediately return requests for comment.
Part of Hartz’s iconic Lincoln Harbor campus, 1000 and 1200 Harbor Blvd. are fixtures on the Hudson waterfront and well-known for their location alongside the Lincoln Tunnel. The distinctive blue glass complex, with its familiar large UBS sign, helped the developer kick off a site that originally called for 2.5 million square feet of commercial space, 100,000 square feet of retail and restaurants, a marina and 300 residential units, part of a decades-long effort to revitalize Weehawken’s industrial waterfront across from Midtown Manhattan.
Hartz has shifted in recent years and worked with local officials to rezone the 60-acre tract, leading to an amended plan that allowed for 2,300 residential units at full build-out in addition to the existing commercial space.
Jeff Sutton leads Manhattan-based Wharton Properties, which is known for its vast retail holdings in New York City. Its partner in the deal, KTB Securities, is a Korean investment firm.
Dunne leads CBRE’s Tristate Institutional Properties team, typically working alongside Jeremy Neuer, Travis Langer, Steve Bardsley, David Gavin and Zach McHale on transactions involving office buildings. Merin’s team for such deals has included David Bernhaut, Gary Gabriel, Frank DiTommaso, Kevin Donner and others from C&W’s New Jersey-based capital markets group.
