Ivy Realty Buys South Brunswick Industrial Building

SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ-Ivy Realty has acquired the 222,536-square-foot industrial building at 51 Commerce Drive here from Commerce SRG LLC.

The deal was reported by Cushman & Wakefield's Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group, which represented the seller in the transaction. No purchase price was disclosed.

The East Rutherford Capital Markets Group team that worked on the deal included Andrew Merin, David Bernhaut, Gary Gabriel, Brian Whitmer and Kyle Schmidt, who worked closely with the Frank Caccavo/Jason Goldman team based at the firm's Edison office. Completed in 1983, 51 Commerce is 96% occupied by three tenants including Lenox Corp., which operates its 54,000-square-foot outlet store at the building.

C&W's Gabriel states, “We had a tremendous response to the offering, given the dramatic improvement of the 8A market since the depths of the recession.”

The brokerage firm reports that the South Brunswick area is seeing increased tenant leasing and sales activity, noting that last year three buildings greater than 800,000 square feet were sold in the Exit 8A area for an average of $85.98 per square foot in 2013. However, the building had a number of short-term leases when the seller placed it on the market. This was a deterrent for some buyers.

“It took a full-service owner/developer like Ivy Realty with experience and resources to recognize the strength and potential of the market and the opportunity at 51 Commerce Drive,” Gabriel says.

“51 Commerce is an opportunity for Ivy to utilize its skilled team to re-position and market an extremely well-located industrial property in a submarket that has seen dramatic improvement,” states David Nenner, EVP of Ivy Realty.