The Partners of Princeton based integrated design firm Joshua Zinder Architecture + Design, Joshua Zinder & Marlyn Zucosky, have been selected the Entrepreneurs of the Year by the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce.
We were very happy to attend the Princeton Chamber of Commerce’s “The New Way of Work” event put together by the Real Estate Business Alliance yesterday morning.
The panel discussion, along with breakfast & networking, was held at the Springdale Golf Club in downtown Princeton.
Featured speakers included Brian Marrs (Manager, Policy & Strategic Sustainability) & Bill Walsh (Director of Corporate Facilities) at NRG Energy and our friend Marlyn Zucosky (Partner & Director of Interior Design) at Joshua Zinder Architecture + Design.
Mr. Marrs & Mr. Walsh excitedly shared a sneak peak of what NRG’s new Princeton building, located on Route 1 in Carnegie Center, will include. The 130,000 sf building will serve as NRG’s new headquarters and is a mix of sustainable design elements for the sake of the environment and also experiments of NRG initiatives. Learn more about all of the features of the project on NRG’s website, here.
Ms. Zucosky discussed trends they are currently seeing in office space design: layouts that allow for more natural light into the center of the floor plan, open work spaces, huddle areas, game room and other elements to attract Millennials to companies. Mr. Walsh commented that many of the trends JZA+D has been noticing are in fact being employed within the new NRG building. Check out some of JZA+D’s projects here.
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 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.
NJBiz uses these words (in the article linked below) to describe suburban corporate campuses in New Jersey- with enough combined square footage to fill five Empire State Buildings.
PlanSmart NJ has taken on the task of developing a “toolkit” of sorts for municipalities to begin to deal with the 14.5 million square feet of vacant, obsolete office and/or lab space in 94 of the state’s largest (over 200K sf) buildings. These campuses that dot New Jersey’s suburban landscape are often referred to as “stranded assets” and will need some creative thinking to reposition them.
“We’re looking at it holistically — that this is an economic development project, it’s an environmental protection project, it’s a resource efficiency project,” said Ann Brady, PlanSmart NJ’s executive director. “We think there’s a lot of opportunity with these sites, to better connect them to the greater community, to use the infrastructure that’s already there, so we’re directing growth to areas where there’s already existing infrastructure.”
Oftentimes municipalities fear redevelopment, rezoning and mixed-use projects. PlanSmart NJ “hopes to frame the issue by quantifying the problem” with “a major two-year research project that will compile data on vacancy, demographics, property tax appeals and other metrics related to the sites, with the aim of creating a guidebook for local officials and sparking a policy change that could help them find new life as mixed-use assets”.
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.