Office Building Sale Nets Daewoo $26.6M

The buyer is the Old Colony Co., an affiliate of Heyman Properties of Westport, CT, and the transaction marks the latter's entry into the New Jersey office market. Heyman, which has a commercial portfolio of more than three million sf, has most of its holdings concentrated in Connecticut and in New York State. The company does own a 75-acre development site in Phillipsburg, NJ, Warren County, on which it proposes to develop a mixed-use complex.

"Heyman Properties has purchased a prime class A building in one of Northern New Jersey's best locations with an extremely secure income stream over the short term and significant upside potential upon re-leasing," according to CBRE's Tri-State Investment Team leader Jeffrey R. Dunne. "The property is a leasehold estate subject to a favorable fixed-rent long-term ground lease."

The asset, built as the North American headquarters for Daewoo and widely recognized locally as the "Daewoo Building," is situated near the convergence of the New Jersey Turnpike (Exit 18), I-80 (Exit 68) and I-95 in Bergen County, less than 10 miles from the George Washington Bridge. Currently, the largest tenant is the Mellon Investor Services Group, according to Dunne.

Dunne, along with Chris McManus of CBRE's Stamford, CT office, Kevin Welsh of its Paramus, NJ office and John Oh and Rolf Kemen of the New York office represented Daewoo and secured the buyer. The Tri-State Investment Team specializes in the sale of properties in the suburban markets surrounding New York City and in second tier markets in the eastern US.

Among the other New Jersey property sales the group has been involved with this year are the 404,517-sf Gatehall II in Parsippany, which brought in more than $101.3 million; 1275 Valley Brook Ave. in Lyndhurst, a 143,000-sf W/D facility; 7 Century Drive, a 66,000-sf office building in Parsippany; and One Taft Rd., a 121,000-sf W/D facility in Totowa.

Besides the now-sold 85 Challenger Rd., the group has also been marketing Aviation Plaza, a food-anchored retail complex of nearly 388,000 sf in Linden, NJ; Hunters Chase Apartments, a 360-unit luxury complex in Marlton, in southern New Jersey; and the I-87/287 Distribution Center, a nearly 893,000-sf complex in Ramapo, NY, just north of the New Jersey border.