The Village Shoppes at Hawk Pointe in Washington Township — Courtesy: Larken Associates
By Joshua Burd
Larken Associates is touting a 20 percent increase in leasing activity in 2018, part of a year in which it also added two New Jersey shopping centers to its regional portfolio.
The Branchburg-based firm on Monday announced the completion of 378 commercial transactions in 2018 spanning about 700,000 square feet of new leases and renewals. That includes activity at the Hillsborough Business Center, a 27-building, 550,000-square-foot flex and industrial campus in Somerset County that remained at 100 percent occupancy for the year.
As part of that activity, Larken cited a 34,388-square-foot renewal by Primus Green Energy, a global leader in small-scale conversion of natural gas to methanol or gasoline. At the Branchburg Commons office and medical complex in Branchburg, Robert Wood Johnson Physician Enterprise PA renewed its lease agreement for seven more years, while law firm Schatzman Baker PA signed a new lease at Montgomery Commons in Princeton.
All told, the firm’s commercial leasing team experienced a 93 percent retention rate across all product types.
Larken also recapped two acquisitions in New Jersey last fall. In Bayonne, the firm partnered with Gallium Real Estate to purchase Bayonne Shops at 175 Avenue A. In Washington Township, the firm acquired The Village at Hawk Pointe, a three-building, 106,416-square-foot retail and medical office complex anchored by ShopRite.
The residential and commercial developer, builder and property manager detailed the New Jersey activity alongside a series of leases and acquisitions in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
“Larken Associates is looking forward to another fantastic year of growth in 2019,” the firm wrote in its 2018 recap.
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