The seller was Keystone Property Trust. Senior director Thomas F. Monahan and president Kenneth F. Crimmins of The Blau & Berg Co., based in Springfield, NJ, represented both parties in the transaction. Other sites considered by the USPS were located in Clifton, Little Falls, Totowa and Montville.

The facility, situated at 200 Industrial Ave., will be converted into the Post Office's New Northern New Jersey Metro Processing and Distribution Center. Located near existing postal facilities in South Hackensack and Paterson, it will absorb the operations of those facilities. The facility was built in 1996 Keystone by The Morris Co., and not long after that the USPS took a look at it for the first time.

"Joseph Morris played a key role in the success of the transaction," according to Crimmins. "Because of the property's size and location, the use of it by the USPS as a major distribution center will significantly improve postal services within the region," he continues. Blau & Berg serves the industrial, commercial and office real estate sectors in the Garden State, and has developed a specialty in logistics and warehousing/distribution facilities.

The building is fully air conditioned, according to Crimmins, and includes 14,000 sf of office area, plus 32-foot heights, an ESFR sprinkler system, 35 loading docks and parking for more than 260 cars and some 90 trucks. When fully converted into a state-of-the-art service center, it will be capable of processing up to one million pieces of outgoing first class mail every day, according to a postal official. It will also generate upwards of 1,000 new jobs.