Kushner/KABR Buy Debt On Ridgefield Park Office Building

(RealShare New Jersey  convenes at the Hyatt Regency, New Brunswick, NJ, September 19.)

RIDGEFIELD PARK, NJ-Kushner Cos., together with the KABR Group, has acquired the $27 million first-mortgage debt on 55 Challenger Rd. in Ridgefield Park. The six-story office building in the Overpeck Centre off the New Jersey Turnpike and Route 46, has 305,000 square feet.

Kushner and KABR Group are each 50% partners in the acquisition. The partnership purchased a note that had an original face amount of $40 million, according to sources close to the deal.

Built in 1990, 55 Challenger was previously leased to Bank of America and it includes a 48,000-square-foot data center, with attendant systems, including cooling towers.  A 140-room Hilton Garden Inn and a Loews Theatre are also part of the surrounding Overpeck Centre; it is set beside Overpeck County Park, which has an18-hole golf course, picnic grounds, ball fields, horseback riding trailers, tennis courts and a boathouse.

Other office tenants at Overpeck Centre include Fleet National Bank, AGFA (Agfa- Gevaert), Daewoo and Samsung.

Kushner, based in New York, has recently been a very active buyer of multifamily properties, purchasing more than 11,000 apartments across the country in the past year. KABR, also based in New York, was founded in 2008 by Kenneth Pasternak, Laurence Rappaport and Adam Altman.  It targets “opportunistic” investment properties in the New York metropolitan area and the Southeast, i.e., assets it believes will increase in value with value-oriented management. KABR currently owns and manages 2.5 million square feet of office, industrial and retail property, in addition to over 2,000 apartment units.