Hampshire, Paragon ID'd as Building's Buyers

Actually, the new ownership involves two companies. The Morristown, NJ-based Hampshire Cos. has teamed up with Paragon Realty Group of Montvale to corral the asset. The total sale price for all three parcels was $17 million, but was $5.5 million for this particular building. The seller was Organon USA, a pharma manufacturing division of the Netherlands-based Akzo Nobel.

And while pharmaceuticals will no longer be made or researched at the site, it will have a new life involving medical uses. Hampshire and Paragon are planning to turn it into a medical office building with a net rentable space of about 100,000 sf. The building, which sits on 11 acres at a full interchange of I-280, does have proximity to some major hospitals, namely St. Barnabas Medical Center and Mountainside Hospital.

"This acquisition and partnership will offer great opportunities to our investors as well as to potential tenants and users," says Norman Feinstein, executive managing director of Hampshire, which bought into the building as yet another acquisition for its very active new $350-million Hampshire Partners Fund VII. "It's a great pleasure to embark on this joint venture with a firm such as Paragon Realty Group."

The sale formally caps off the piece-by-piece disposition by Organon USA of its former multi-building headquarters campus here. "The sale of this last parcel required a unified effort by many partners, including Organon, the buyer and others," says Andrew Zezas, president and CEO of the Kenilworth-based Real Estate Strategies Corp., who oversaw the three-stage process.

The disposition began in mid-2001 when Organon USA bought the 440,000-sf office building at 56 Livingston Ave. in Roseland from Prudential and relocated from here. The company sold a cluster of three smaller buildings totaling 60,000 sf to a private investor group headed by Prism Capital Partners in late 2005. And earlier this year, a three-story, 50,000-sf office building was sold to 347 Mt. Pleasant LLC, a private investor group, leaving just-sold 375 W. Mt. Pleasant as the last piece.