Toll Brothers Relocates HQ to 203,000 SF in Horsham

HORSHAM, PA-Toll Brothers Inc. acquired a three-story, 203,000-sf, class A office building at 250 Gibraltar Rd. here for its new corporate headquarters. Employees in its current 70,000-sf headquarter location on Philmont Avenue in Huntingdon Valley, PA will join others housed in outlying properties in the new facility by the end of this year.

Prudential Insurance Co. is the seller of the now-vacant property on a 17-acre parcel, which fronts Dresher and Gibraltar roads. Its interior was renovated in 2000. Among its amenities are 20-ft-high atrium lobbies, 16 conference rooms, a 150-seat conference/training room, a 235-seat full-service cafeteria, an 840-sf computer/server room, a first-floor PC training lab and parking for 995 vehicles.

Walter Czarnecki, a senior associate in the Wayne, PA office of CB Richard Ellis, represented Toll Brothers in the transaction. Philadelphia-based Flynn Co. and the following representatives of Chatham, NJ-based Garibaldi Group represented Prudential: Jeffrey J. Toia, SVP and director; Jeffrey J. Garibaldi, president; Gerald E. Moore Jr, managing director of financial services, and Gerald A. Bower Jr., VP of capital markets.

Neither Czarnecki nor Toia would disclose the sale price. Representatives from Toll Brothers did not return calls by deadline. Toia says the transaction represented an opportunity for a major corporation to acquire a quality, headquarters-grade property at a price below reproduction cost in a proven submarket. Area brokers would not speculate on the price except to say, on condition of anonymity, that it was probably significantly below the approximately $175-per-sf selling price that a leased building would command in Horsham.

Czarnecki tells GlobeSt.com that he and the client looked at several alternative sites in the Philadelphia suburbs before choosing this building. Robert Walters, senior managing director of the mid-Atlantic region of CBRE, which is based in Philadelphia, tells GlobeSt.com, “The transaction is not only good for Toll Brothers, but also improves vacancy in Horsham by taking a large building off the market.”

Toll Brothers’ president and COO, Zvi Barzilay, says in a statement, that the move “will allow us to maintain maximum efficiencies with space that is large enough to accommodate continuing internal growth.”

Toll Brothers, the nation’s leading builder of luxury homes, operates in 21 states and is having a banner year. Its second quarter 2004 net income rose 37%, compared with the same quarter a year ago; revenue for the latest quarter was up 35%; contracts were at their highest ever, reaching $1.6 billion on 2,600 homes, an increase of 73% over second quarter 2003, and its backlog, totaling $3.7 billion for 6,225 homes, was also its highest ever, an increase of 69% over second quarter 2003.