BASF Takes 149,000 SF for North American HQ

Marc Rosenberg of Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant in the transaction, while the Gale Co. was represented in-house by Jim Nugent, the firm's vice president of leasing. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, however, asking rents at Gale's multi-building Park Avenue Campus in this Morris County community are generally listed in the $30 per sf range.

100 Campus Dr. is a 353,000-sf, four-story building built in 1990, according to Nugent. The Gale Co. moved its own headquarters into the building last year from another Park Avenue Campus building, and other tenants at 100 Campus Dr. include Merrill Lynch, ICMG/Hartford Insurance Co., Atlantic Mutual Insurance Co. and Shiongi USA.BASF Corp. is the North American affiliate of chemical giant BASF AG of Ludwigshafen, Germany. The company employs about 11,000 people in North America and last year had sales of $9 billion. Globally, the company had sales of $42 billion last year.

Last fall, BASF had announced its intention to relocate its North American headquarters from its company-owned campus in Mount Olive, to leased space elsewhere in Northern New Jersey, and that it had hired Cushman & Wakefield to find it a new home. C&W is also marketing the BASF's existing campus, which it has occupied since 1994.

Besides shedding a major real estate asset in favor of leased space, BASF is also cutting back on the amount of space it's occupying. The Mount Olive campus, which covers nearly 155 acres in two parcels within the Rockefeller Development Group's 680-acre International Trade Center, includes a five-building complex of approximately 950,000 sf, completed in two phases in 1994 and 1998. The adjoining sites are approved for a build-out of at least another 700,000 sf.

When the Mount Olive campus hit the market, C&W executive vice president Robert J. Donnelly termed it "one of the greatest opportunities ever available for major corporations to gain access to such a new, high-end suburban campus."