Summit East in Summit is home to two newly renovated office buildings, including a 191,448-square-foot structure known as Building L that was built in 2015 and has a four-story parking garage, a cafeteria with a two-level seating area, conference space, 56 meeting rooms and an atrium with a skylight and collaborative work areas. — Courtesy: Onyx Equities
By Joshua Burd
Johnson & Johnson’s highly anticipated consumer health spinoff is leasing 290,000 square feet of office and laboratory space in Summit, in a deal that will activate a campus recently acquired by Onyx Equities.
A report Sunday by ROI-NJ cited a regulatory filing by Kenvue Inc., as the new company will be known, which said that it has signed a 15-year lease for a site that will include both its new global corporate headquarters and lab space to principally support research and development. It’s expected to move into the office space starting in 2025 and continue through 2026 for occupancy at the new R&D building, while it will continue to operate in the meantime from its interim corporate headquarters in the Skillman section of Montgomery.
Onyx subsequently confirmed that the location is its 46-acre Summit East property on Morris Avenue. The 46-acre site, a former Celgene Corp. campus that the real estate firm acquired in 2021, is home to two high-end office buildings and nine other structures that it had been marketing as part of a potential redevelopment site, working alongside brokers with JLL and a design team with HLW.
“Johnson & Johnson’s decision to locate its new Kenvue Consumer Health division at our Summit East campus affirms New Jersey’s continued leadership in the life science industry and validates our strategy of acquiring and transforming historic pharma campuses for a new era,” Onyx said in a prepared statement. The firm added that the initial development will include 191,000 square feet of office space and construction of a new 100,000-square-foot R&D building that will provide Kenvue with a state-of-the art laboratory and workspace facility.
“Summit is at the epicenter of an educated biomedical workforce, lending itself to the next generation of consumer products in an area’s already thriving innovation hub and with a great legacy of leadership.”
The investment and development firm said last summer that it was weighing multiple options that would include maintaining the two newly renovated office buildings, which include a combined 345,000 square feet and a bevy of modern amenity spaces.
Johnson & Johnson, which is based in New Brunswick, announced last week that it was moving ahead with plans for Kenvue’s initial public offering, which is slated to include at least 151 million shares of common stock. The IPO price is currently expected to be between $20 and $23 per share, while Kenvue has applied to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KVUE.
The long-awaited spinoff will be the parent company for iconic brands like Tylenol, Listerine, and Band-Aid, among many others owned by the 137-year-old health care and pharmaceutical giant. J&J said it plans to own 91.9 percent of the consumer health company, or more than 1.7 million shares, after completing the IPO.
Onyx acquired Summit East in 2021, around two years after Bristol-Myers Squibb purchased Celgene. The firm touted the campus as a “move-in ready headquarters location with a unique opportunity to be reconfigured to meet the market’s demand,” one that is walkable to a popular downtown and able to draw from the region’s highly educated labor pool.
The overall campus has amenities such as an electric bike station and 10 entry points to the Summit Park Line, a new 1.2-mile pedestrian path that connects the development with downtown Summit.
“Summit East offers residual value in terms of its current infrastructure, $220 million in recent capital expenditures and two brand-new Class A, LEED-certified properties that position it for immediate occupancy,” DJ Venn, executive vice president of asset management with Onyx Equities, said in a July 2022 announcement. “We anticipate a great deal of interest from end users across the corporate spectrum as this is a rare opportunity for a blank-slate parcel in an ideal location.”
ROI-NJ noted that, in 2022, J&J’s Consumer Health segment generated revenue of $15 billion, enough to make it a Fortune 100 company. During the first quarter of 2023, the unit generated $3.8 billion in sales.
Onyx, JLL unveil redevelopment concepts and high-end office space at Summit campus
