BPG Properties Lays Off 10% of Corporate Staff

PHILADELPHIA-BPG Properties Ltd. reduced its corporate headcount last week in response to market conditions. The longtime locally based private equity real estate fund manager tells GlobeSt.com that the 21 layoffs constitute approximately 10% of the corporate staff at its various offices throughout the country.

The majority of the positions eliminated were construction related and there were “certain other staff reductions,” a company spokeswoman tells GlobeSt.com. “This step was taken in response to the sluggish economy in general and the impact on the commercial real estate industry in particular,” she says.

BPG is headquartered in the Philadelphia area with regional offices in Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington, DC; Boston; Atlanta; and Raleigh-Durham. It operates a portfolio of more than 20 million square feet of office, retail, student housing and industrial properties, and 25,000 apartment units throughout the US. The company, which acquires under-performing properties with hope of adding value, declined to discuss its current investment strategies at this time.

Earlier this month, it began marketing for sale its Morris Crossroads Corporate Campus, a one-million-square-foot class A office headquarters facility along Interstate 80 in Mount Olive, NJ. The development was owned and occupied as the North American headquarters of German based BASF Corp. from 1994-2006.

The asking price is $47.5 million, or about $47 per square foot. BPG bought the facility three years ago for $50 million and invested $20 million to retrofit the complex into a modern, energy-efficient class-A office complex that could be subdivided if necessary for multiple tenants.

BPG says it would cost $250 million or $250 per square foot to replicate the interconnected five-building campus today. It describes the asking price as “essentially the cost of the land, or less than one year’s rent in Manhattan.”