New Jersey’s industrial market has been going through some changes recently. What are they and how did they come about?
This NJBiz article highlights some of the issues with the state’s current warehouse stock and what is being done to change that.
The College of New Jersey and PRC Group took on the challenge of creating Campus Town, a $120 million mixed use development project, in Ewing, NJ.
Campus town will include 612 upscale apartments for students and also a 11,400 sf fitness center, restaurants (such as Panera Bread, Mexican Mariachi Grill and more) and retailers (Barnes & Noble/Starbucks and more) open to both the students and the public. It will also be an attractive amenity package for workers who spend their days in the 1 million square feet of office space less than a mile away on the I-95 Corridor.
The project will create a richer environment for the students, but will also be a boon to the community as well, creating what Curt Heuring, VP for Administration of TCNJ, calls the “perfect interaction space” for both groups.
For more details please read the full story here.
The Trenton-Mercer Airport, located in Ewing, NJ, will be receiving $2.125 million as part of a state grant program specifically created to add value to New Jersey’s airports through improvement projects. County Executive Brian Hughes says “I think this recognizes that the Trenton-Mercer Airport is of regional importance.”
The Trenton-Mercer Airport is home to Frontier Airlines, who has flown out of Ewing since 2012.
The Princeton market is seeing a trend- companies moving to new space not because they need to expand, or shrink- but because they want an upgrade. Current building stock, an uptick in the economy in general and the need to create a work environment that will attract quality talent are all helping to herd companies toward higher quality buildings. Landlords with lower rental rates are helping, too.
We’ve posted a lot about New Jersey’s current incentive packages aimed at both retaining current jobs and businesses within the state’s borders and also attempting to attract new businesses and jobs.
There are both fans and critics of these programs, as with most things. In an attempt to get an unbiased answer on whether or not these incentive packages are doing their job- Rutgers University has been given the task of figuring just that out and will start researching and releasing reports in the next 3 years.
Quick facts:
Who: TRAC Intermodal
Currently located at: 211 College Road East, Plainsboro & 2 Independence Way, South Brunswick
Will consolidate to: 750 College Road East, Plainsboro
Size: 82,000 sf
Lease term: 10 years, 9 months
Incentive amount: $9.8 million
Who: LMT Mercer Group
Currently located at: 690 Puritan Ave, Lawrence
Will build at new location at: New York Ave & Strawberry St, Trenton
Size: 90,000 sf
Incentive amount: $1.55 million
To read more about the deals at TRAC Intermodal or LMT Mercer Group, please visit nj.com for the full stories.
Leaders from 6 Mercer County towns came together to discuss their individual priorities and the future success of New Jersey as a whole.
Popular topics of conversation included the NJ Transportation Trust Fund, walkable communities and NRG Energy’s new building in the breakfast hosted last week by the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce.
West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh, Princeton Mayer Liz Lempert, Pennington borough administrator Eileen Heinzel, Hopewell Township Mayor Harvey Lester, Hopewell Borough Mayor Paul Anzano and East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov were in attendance for the roundtable talk.
Monday, May 4th the YMCA of Trenton hosted their 10th Annual Golf Outing. Mercer Oak Realty’s President Sab Russo was in attendance and played in a foursome with Tim Aker, (Treasurer, Hopewell Valley Baseball & Softball Association), Randi Koss (Account Executive, Innovative Commercial Interiors) and Paul March (Managing Director, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank).
72 golfers participated in the event at Greenacres Country Club- all for a good cause. Proceeds help raise funds to send kids to summer camp who may not otherwise have the opportunity through the Summer Camp Scholarship Fund for Trenton Youth. This year’s event was the best golf outing to date for the YMCA of Trenton.
To learn more about what the YMCA of Trenton (serving Trenton, Lawrence and Ewing) is doing in the community, please visit their website: http://trentonymca.org/.
The phrase “mixed-use” has been around for a long time, but seems to be growing more prominent in conversations, news articles and online discussions each day. We’ve mentioned a few mixed-use projects in this news section in the past and have had many conversations in the office voicing different viewpoints and imagining possibilities for here in Mercer County.
We can point to a few examples of existing mixed-use environments in our backyard: downtown Princeton (Mercer Co, NJ) and Lambertville and New Hope (Hunterdon Co, NJ and Bucks Co, PA, respectively) that have been around for a long time and are very successful at being what mixed-use plans hope to be: any urban, suburban or village development (even a single building) that blends a combination of residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or industrial uses where those functions are physically and functionally integrated, and that provides pedestrian connections. Mixed-use has had a variety of exact definitions over the years and still gets used in different ways from time to time- if you are interested in digging a little deeper, this article provided by Placemakers is a good place to start to understand the nuances.
We recently attended the Princeton Chamber of Commerce’s REBA (Real Estate Business Alliance) breakfast event (Bringing Positive Change to the Princeton Region) that was centered around planning concepts that would attract millennials and empty nesters to the Princeton/Mercer region- in particular Trenton. The mixed-use concept was spoke about at length- looking at demographics and trends around the country for the targeted age groups and considering how to apply them to our backyard.
Here is an article about the sale of a long vacant building in Hightstown that hints that a mixed-use redevelopment may be in the cards. An article from earlier in the month follows the possible redevelopment of the Ocean Spray site in Bordentown into a possible “gateway into town” mixing loft style office space and possibly a brewery, yoga studio, etc.
What does this mean for the real estate landscape in Mercer County (commercial, residential, retail, industrial)? Do you see this type of project taking hold and changing our area? Or is this another fad that will pass?
We’d love to hear your thoughts and continue the conversation. You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.