NUTLEY, NJ—JLL, the commercial brokerage firm handling the sale of Roche's shuttered campus in Nutley and Clifton, says it has already conducted approximately 30 tours of the drug maker's sprawling 119-acre campus.

"We're finding a very positive level of interest," says JLL Managing Director Tom Stanton, who notes that the firm will be soliciting proposals for the property by the end of the third quarter of this year.

The plan calls for leasing five buildings on the site, totaling approximately 1.5 million square feet, that Roche has identified as high-value assets, Stanton said. Those include the 15-story glass high-rise that overlooks the campus on Route 3. Roche wants single tenants for each of those buildings, according to The Record.

Last week, JLL released its "New Jersey/New York City/Westchester County Life Sciences Outlook," which chronicled the trend of consolidation and downsizing by large pharmaceutical companies in the region, such as Roche. Today's transaction volume and demand for space within the region are being driven by "mid-tier companies and specialty players," including pharmaceutical and biotech companies, the report states.

Landlords can repurpose the excess space now on the market to accommodate fast growing life-sciences companies, says Daniel Loughlin, managing director and broker lead for JLL's New Jersey office. "We look at the next owner (of the Roche property) as being able to take advantage of that," JLL's Stanton adds. See story in The Record.