Cushman & Wakefield, Inc. and the Bloustein School will host “The Future of New Jersey’s Suburban Office Campuses,” a program for regional investors and developers, on Tuesday, June 18. The program will focus on opportunities to create interactive, multifunctional, 24-hour environments through the adaptive reuse or repositioning of aging suburban office campus product.
The event will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Lotos Club, 5 East 66th Street in Manhattan. It will feature a presentation reviewing the evolution of New Jersey suburban office campuses as well as trend-lines that could result in new real estate investment opportunities. Additionally, a panel discussion involving development, capital markets, brokerage and planning/design experts will address challenges and constraints, emerging trends, ROI potential, and other key aspects of this exciting new niche.
“Commercial real estate has enjoyed a steady recovery into 2013, yet suburban office product remains in transition,” noted Gualberto “Gil” Medina, Cushman & Wakefield’s New Jersey executive managing director. “Our state has re-invented itself in the past – from an agricultural economy to a technology-driven manufacturing economy, to a knowledge-based suburban economy, which spurred the great 1980s office building boom. Now, the state faces a third transformation, away from that suburban-centric, auto-dependent office market.”
Today, the suburban office inventory in New Jersey’s 11 Central and Northern counties has grown to more than 152 million square feet. Of this inventory, nearly 31.5 million square feet currently is available, creating a vacancy rate of 20.7 percent. Within this context, the June 18 program will address several pertinent questions:
– Can suburban office campuses be re-positioned so as to yield acceptable returns?
– If so, where are the opportunities?
– What are the models for maximizing return on investment by effective reuse and redesign?
– With continuing capitalization rate compression, will a selective re-positioning of some suburban office campuses present realistic investment opportunities?
Key Cushman & Wakefield executives, including Medina; James Underhill, CEO-The Americas; Greg Vorwaller, global head of Capital Markets; and Gary Gabriel, executive vice president, Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group, will kick off and close the program.
James W. Hughes, Ph.D., dean of the Bloustein School; Hugh Trumbull, principal, Kohn Pederson Fox & Associates; and Sam Morreale, co-founder and managing partner, Vision Equities, LLC will lead the “evolution and trend-lines” presentation.
Panelists discussing specific New Jersey re-use projects will include Robert Schmitt, principal, Hampshire Real Estate Companies; Clark Machemer, vice president and regional director of development, Rockefeller Group Development Corporation; Adam Altman, managing director and principal, KBR; and Gene Diaz, principal, Prism Capital Partners, LLC.
For more information or to register for this event, please contact Caryl Communications, (201) 796-7788.