New York City may be the financial capital of the world, boasting an endless sea of office buildings and other commercial properties, but Jersey City’s status has recently rivaled that of the big city and has been pulling companies out of Manhattan.
Not since the days when Ellis Island was operational has Hudson County welcomed so many newcomers. Instead of immigrants climbing down from boats with their worldly belongings in hand, Hudson’s new arrivals are wearing suits and ties and carrying briefcases and laptops.
At the epicenter of the commercial real estate earthquake, rumbling with jackhammers and bulldozers, is Jersey City. Likely to be named the state’s largest city when the 2000 Census is complete, Jersey City has skyrocketed to the top of the real estate market in New Jersey.
The majority of Jersey City’s development is being handled by four companies, each filling the Jersey City skyline with projects that are estimated to bring (or have already brought) thousands of new commuters to Exchange Place, Newport and Grove Street each day.
Mack-Cali, a Cranford-based real estate investment trust that has more than 250 properties spread over 12 states, continues to develop the Harborside Financial Center. The waterfront office plaza has attracted top international firms and leased almost all of the space in its first three waterfront buildings.
Mack-Cali has filled more than 1.9 million square feet of office space, with rental rates between $20 and $30 per square foot, and continues to look ahead with the development of 3.9 million square feet in five new office towers. The buildings would range in size, with up to 1.5 million square feet in what will become the state’s tallest building, the 59-story Plaza VII.
Once complete, Harborside will have more than 6 million square feet of office, hotel and residential space.
On Harborside’s north end, Mack-Cali plans on developing the 56-story office building that will be known as the American Financial Exchange, slated to contain 1.8 million square feet of office space and 32 elevators.
Also involved in the American Financial Exchange project is Jersey City’s own Panepinto Properties, which has been involved in city development for years. The project will blanket 5.25 acres of waterfront land, with direct access to ferry service to and from Manhattan.
Panepinto also is involved in developing the Columbus Plaza project just outside of the Grove Street PATH station. The project includes a 750,000 square foot building that would house commercial and residential suites, with parking for 750 cars and 115,000 square feet for retail/commercial space.
The firm is also involved in projects along Washington Boulevard (900,000 square foot office tower), Journal Square (50,000 square foot office building across from the PATH station) and the restoration of the Apple Tree House Conservancy, where George Washington is said to have planned strategy for the Revolutionary War.
In Jersey City’s Newport section, just north of the Harborside projects, the Lefrak Organization has developed a city within a city, according to a recent press release. The company has quickly erected lanes of residential housing complexes on one side of Washington Boulevard, and towering office buildings and scaffolding on the other.
The "Pride of Newport," a family of office towers built by Lefrak, has lured big-name firms from across the water as well. The Newport Office Center III, slated to open its doors in September, is a 14-story edifice that will blaze a path for continuing NOC projects in the coming years.
Lefrak has just announced plans for a fourth building office tower that will house 800,000 square feet of office space. Joining the distinguished list of proposed tenants in the office towers are U.S. Trust Corp. and Cigna Corp., said to be relocating hundreds of employees from their respective offices in New York.
Newport currently has seven apartment buildings (2,540 units) and an office complex with 1.5 million square feet of occupied office space, along with the Newport Mall (the highest grossing retail mall in the Northeast), and one of the largest international supermarkets in the world.
Hartz Mountain paid $10 million for an acre of waterfront land on the property of the old Colgate complex, just south of Grundy Pier in Jersey City. On that land, the firm built the first of what will be a series of office buildings. Last fall, Hartz broke ground on 70 Hudson St. right next door to the shell of what will be its 90 Hudson St. building, popularly referred to as the Merrill Lynch building because of its anchor tenant.
It will cost $80 million to build 90 Hudson St., which will have 420,000 square feet of office space. artz paid an additional $10 million for another acre for the 70 Hudson building, whose tenants are said to include the Manhattan-based Lord Abbett mutual fund manager and American Express. Abbett is reported to be moving its entire operation from the General Motors building in New York and will occupy 50,000 square feet at somewhere around $33 per.
Hoboken and other areas
Just north of Jersey City’s golden shores, the boom continues into Hoboken, where the Parsippany-based SJP Properties is said to be very close to signing an agreement that would lure publishing giant Wiley & Sons from Manhattan to a proposed office complex on the south waterfront.
Elsewhere in the county, the skyline gets fatter and longer as Manhattan-based companies like Goldman Sachs and Paine Webber move parts of their operations out of the city, where they are paying almost double the rent they have found in Hudson County.
A representative from Roseland Properties, which is developing projects on the West New York waterfront, said that such big-name migration only leads to more, because it tells CEOs of major firms that the area is conducive to productive business.