PERTH AMBOY, NJ — Bridge Development Partners, has acquired the 103-acre ePort Logistics Center in Perth Amboy, NJ, and will build three spec warehouses totalling 1.3 million square feet on the site.
ALM Global,LLC
October 20, 2015
By Steve Lubetkin
PERTHAMBOY,NJ—Bridge Development Partners, has acquired the 103-acre ePort Logistics Center in Perth Amboy, NJ, from a joint venture between Goldman Sachs and Viridian Partners.
The selling partnership assembled the 103-acre site in January 2013 to reposition the land into a class A warehouse/distribution park. The site is fully approved for the development of 1.3 million square feet of speculative class A warehouse and distribution space, featuring three buildings located at 980 High St., 1000 High St. and 960 High St., comprised of 718,200 square feet, 354,250 square feet and 220,200 square feet, respectively. Bridge will commence construction immediately and deliver the buildings in 2016.
“It’s just very difficult to find land in northern New Jersey with good proximity to roadways and the city, so this was a highly sought-after site,” Michael D. Hines, Executive Vice President, Institutional Properties, CBRE, tells GlobeSt.com exclusively.
CBRE brokered the sale to Bridge Partners, with Hines, Brian Fiumara and Brad Ruppel of CBRE National Partners and Thomas Monahan and Noah Balanoff of CBRE’s New Jersey office. The CBRE team exclusively represented the development site’s former ownership in the transaction. CBRE’s Tom Monahan and Noah Balanoff will be the leasing agents for the project.
The tight industrial market in northern New Jersey makes developments like this very attractive to investors, even with the environmental remediation challenges, Hines says.
“The industrial stock in the Meadowlands is older, it all has low clear height, many of the buildings flood,” he says. “If you deliver a 36-foot clear building that has really good dimensions, trailer storage, easy access, these rents are going from $5 or $6 to $9 or $10, depending on what market you’re in. We love the site, we think it makes sense at mid- to high $7s on a per square foot basis.”
Viridian took 18 months to remediate the site, working with the Perth Amboy Redevelopment Agency, and delivered a pad-ready site for development of 1.3 million square feet of speculative class A warehouse and distribution space.
“The ePort project is an excellent study in successful brownfield redevelopment,” says Tate Goss of Viridian Partners. “Through dedication and a lot of hard work, the project evolved into a real partnership between the City of Perth Amboy, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, Middlesex County, and a truly top notch team of real estate and remediation professionals. We were incredibly pleased to work with CBRE and Bridge Development Partners on the sale transaction and wish Bridge great success in the continued development of the property.”
The planned ePortLogistics Center is strategically located in New Jersey’s Port Industrial submarket – a premier gateway industrial market in the United States – and provides unparalleled access to one of the world’s most concentrated and affluent consumer bases. New Jersey ranks as the third largest industrial market in the United States by square footage, with consistent demand due to its vast logistical infrastructure network of interstate highways, deep-water cargo ports, air freight and rail capabilities.
“ePort Logistics Center represented the ideal formula for a successful gateway market brownfield repositioning project,” says Fiumara of CBRE. “The transaction combined an immensely talented and experienced ‘ground-down’ redevelopment partnership, supportive local government, unparalleled port and metropolitan consumer access, and an institutional purchaser focused on the incomparable scope in the East Coast’s most mature and fundamentally strong industrial market.”
