Mack-Cali Adds 3 Sylvan Way to Parsippany Business Campus Holdings

PARSIPPANY, NJ—Continuing its strategic repositioning to focus on core holdings, Mack-Cali Realty Corporation acquired 3 Sylvan Way, a three-story vacant class A office property in its 600-acre Mack-Cali Business Campus in Parsippany, and is planning extensive renovations to it and two sister buildings.

Mack-Cali purchased the property from credit rating company Dun & Bradstreet, andtwo factors drove Mack's interest in acquiring the building, Mack-Cali president Michael DeMarco tells GlobeSt.com exclusively.

One is that 3 Sylvan Way sits between One and 5 Sylvan Way, and the buildings share a connected, below-grade parking structure that provides protected walkways between the three buildings.

The buildings will be repositioned as an interconnected three-building mini campus, as part of the overall Campus, which includes 15 class A office properties totaling approximately 2.1 million square feet of space.

"If someone else owned it, it would be a little problematic, because of the shared access underneath," DeMarco says. "We felt like it didn't make sense for another developer to own it. It was empty, and empty buildings are problematic today, but we felt that we were going to deal best if we could use it to lease the three buildings as one complex, which totals just around 400,000 square feet."

The second factor is the modest, 50,000 square-foot floor plates in the three story, 147,241-square-foot, building, DeMarco says.

"It's an easy floor to rent and even to break up, you could do two 25 [thousand square foot offices], as opposed to having a 400,000 square-foot building that is taller or has much larger floor plates," he says. "We felt we could amenitize the three of them differently as one complex than if it was three separate buildings."

DeMarco says because of the interconnections between the three buildings, upgrades will probably include two cafes and a coffee bar. Other amenities planned are a full-service fitness center with yoga rooms and a golf simulator, an upgraded business-class conference center.

"If you want to work out, you should be able to walk from one building to the other," DeMarco says. "We're trying to make it somewhat unique for people who want class A space in that market."

Plans also call for ground floor retail space in the three-building complex, DeMarco says, including fast casual restaurants.

Owning the three buildings also gives Mack-Cali flexibility to reposition tenants within the complex to create different space arrangements for prospective new occupants.

"If someone comes and says they need 200,00 square feet, we can play here," DeMarco says. "It's hard to find that in the suburbs without going to really big floor plates or to have a building that's just one tenant. If you do that, it doesn't allow for multitenant on the rest of the floors. This one does."

"Adding 3 Sylvan Way to our portfolio will allow us to join our properties in a way that will bring incredible value to both our portfolio and tenants," said Ricardo Cardoso, Mack-Cali executive vice president and chief investment officer. "Our renovation plans will allow Mack-Cali to command more attractive leasing rates."

Mack-Cali Business Campus is located at the intersection of I-287 and routes 10 and 202, and offers shuttle service to the nearby Morris Plains train station.

Separately, Mack-Cali said it closed on a new $350 million unsecured term loan, which will be used primarily to repay the company's $200 million, 5.8 percent unsecured bonds scheduled to mature on January 15, 2016, and to pay down outstanding borrowings on its $600 million unsecured credit facility.