Suburban Flex Buildings Change Hands

NORRISTOWN, PA-P Mascaro and Sons, a waste hauling and waste management company, will relocate its headquarters from Harleysville to the former GE building at 2650 Audubon Road, just off Trooper Road here. General Electric Co. sold the 95,000-sf former data center.

The price was undisclosed. However, on condition of anonymity, a broker familiar with the Norristown market tells GlobeSt.com that properties of this type and size are trading for between $50 per sf and $60 per sf, which might put the price tag at between a little under $4.8 million and $5.7 million.

Jeff Barker and Kim Finnerty of the local office of Cushman & Wakefield represented GE. David McFadden, Adam Shute and Jim Eaton of the Wayne office of locally based NAI/Geis Realty Group represented the buyer. Eaton tells GlobeSt.com the building was constructed for a division of GE in the early 1990s and was vacant at the time of the sale.

In an unrelated transaction, a private investor sold a 10,153-sf industrial flex building in Glenside. John R. Longino of King of Prussia-based Jackson Cross Partners represented Charles H. Beaudet, the seller of the two-story building at 323-333 W. Glenside Avenue in Glenside. Dan Helwig of Dan Helwig Realtors in Glenside represented the buyer, Thomas Fulp of Fulp Investments LLC. The software gaming company will locate its headquarters office and warehouse in the industrial/flex building. Longino says, "there is an active market for small commercial buildings for sale in the Philadelphia suburbs, and the demand is particularly strong in Glenside," which is about 15 miles west of Norristown.

The sale price was not disclosed. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a person familiar with this transaction tells GlobeSt.com, "the sale price was likely to have been between $85 per sf and $95 per sf," which would put the transaction at between $863,000 and $965,000. This source confirms that users, versus investors, "are adding to the strength of suburban small-property sales."