Harborside 5 at 185 Hudson St. (foreground) in Jersey City — File photo/Courtesy: CBRE
By Joshua Burd
Veris Residential Inc. is on the verge of shedding its one remaining office building, a nearly 1 million-square-foot tower in Jersey City that is under contract to sell for $85 million.
The company on Wednesday announced the pending deal for Harborside 5, at 185 Hudson St., as part of its fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 earnings report. It noted that it signed a binding contract in January to sell the 34-story building to an undisclosed buyer, all but completing its transition to a pure-play multifamily operator under a plan that is years in the making.
A source familiar with the deal identified the buyer as 601W Cos. LLC, the New York-based firm that just last year acquired Harborside buildings 1, 2 and 3 in Jersey City from Veris. The $420 million deal, which spanned nearly 2 million square feet, marked a milestone for the real estate investment trust and for the flagship waterfront office campus that was long synonymous with its predecessor, Mack-Cali Realty Corp., before it rebranded in 2021.
“Over the past three years, we have successfully transformed Veris Residential from a complex company to a pure-play multifamily REIT underpinned by a high-quality portfolio of Class A properties and a vertically integrated, best-in-class operating platform,” said Mahbod Nia, the company’s CEO. “While we have built a strong foundation to date, the potential for continued value creation and relative outperformance as we mature as a multifamily company is tremendous. We look forward to this next phase, during which we will work to further optimize our operations, capital and balance sheet to the benefit of our stakeholders.”
CBRE and Cushman & Wakefield were marketing Harborside 5 on Veris’ behalf. According to the REIT’s Q4 earnings release, the 977,225-square-foot building was 34.6 percent leased, including 42,964 square feet that is expiring this year and 28,856 square feet expiring in 2025.
The property came to market in late 2022 alongside Harborside 6, a 245,364-square-foot office building at the corner of Christopher Columbus Drive and Washington Street, which American Equity Partners acquired last year. Meantime, Related Cos. last fall acquired Harborside 4, an adjacent parcel that’s now slated to become a 750-unit luxury apartment tower.
The sale of Harborside 5, which was built in 2002 and upgraded in 2011, will mark the last piece of what was once a sprawling office portfolio under Mack-Cali, which was crippled by waning demand for its aging suburban properties starting more than a decade ago. That prompted its plan to right-size its office holdings and expand into the luxury multifamily sector, which began in earnest with its 2012 acquisition of Roseland Property Co.
That transition accelerated when the REIT, under new leadership at the board and executive level, rebranded in 2021 to Veris Residential. The company then declared its plan to sell all non-multifamily properties, including office buildings in higher-end submarkets such as the Hudson waterfront and Short Hills.
Veris places another Harborside office tower, land site under contract for combined $104 million
