NEWS
Marriott plans 150-room hotel in downtown Newark
Development adjacent to Prudential Center will also include retail space
By Philip read (Star Ledger Staff)
A 150-room Courtyard by Marriott will begin rising later this year next to the Prudential Center, marking the first new hotel in Newark downtown in nearly 40 years and signaling the strength of the 15,000-seat arena's economic pull, official say yesterday.
The arrival of the highly recognized hospitality nameplate, announced jointly by Newark and the chain's corporate partners, is being touted as a sign New Jersey's largest city is becoming a "24/7 destination" even amid diificult economic times.
The Marriott will be physically attached to the Prudential center, home to the National Hockey League's New Jersey Devils, and include 15,000 suare feet of retain space facing Newark's heavily traveled Broad Street at Lafayette Street. The developer is Turker Development Corp., which has offices in Chicago and in Newark.
"The hotel and retail center will sevice not only the city, but the thousands of people who travel to the area for entertainment and sporting events each year," said Richard Tucker, the company's chief executive.
The Marriott, which received its corporate parent's blessing for the hotel last month, will include business meeting rooms, a buffet area, lounge, swimming pool and fitness center. It is scheduled for completion by 2012.
"I think it's great news for Newark," said Jeff Kolodkin, a broker at commercial real-estate agency Grubb & Ellis in Fairfield with an in-depth knowledge of the Broad Street market. "I know Marriott does extensive research on where they put their properties. They must feel very confident."
Indeed, Tucker Development has already posted leasing information for the Courtyard by Marriott at the Prudential Center, nothing that 34,000 vehicles pass the street corner each day and that 38 percent of Newark residents' purchases, or some $575 million in sales, are made outside the city.
The deal comes just months after news that plans for a 350-room hotel on nearby Mulberry Street became, in the words of one city official, "a victim of recession."
Yesterday, the mood had decidedly shifted.
"We believe that precisely because of the economic downturn, developers and investors are looking for under-leveraged markets that have been overlooked in the past," said Stefan Pryor, Newark's deputy major for economic development. "Newark has the potential to come out of the recession with strong projects such as these."
Prudential Center News/Events
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Highest Manhattan Office Vacancy Since '04
Oct 6, 2009 - CRE News
Manhattan's office-market vacancy rate increased 60 basis points in Q3 to 11.1%, its highest level since Q3 of 2004, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
The brokerage said that the market's average asking rent during the quarter dropped 5.2% to $57.09/sf and is down 21.8% from a year earlier.
However, office-leasing activity increased 50.1% in the quarter to 4.9 million square feet. The Q3 volume is the highest since before the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.
The uptick in leasing activity represents "a shift in psychology" for tenants, according to Joseph Harbert, Cushman's New York region chief operating officer. Tenants who had been on the sidelines evaluating market conditions are instead "starting to make long-term decisions to lock in leases at rental rates that haven't been seen in several years," he said.
Steep discounts in Q3 rents for space that's available for sublease helped drop the vacancy rate for that space by 10 bp to 2.8%. The midtown submarket has a 12% overall vacancy rate, down 30 bp from Q2, and an average asking rent of $63.53, a 3% drop.
Downtown's vacancy rate increased 1.2 percentage points to 9.9% and its average rent fell 4% to $42.01/sf. In midtown South, the vacancy rate rose 70 bp to 9.4%, while the average rent dropped 3% to $47.98/sf.
Day Pitney Signs Full-Building Lease at 1 Jefferson Road
Welsh Represents Law Firm in 100,000-SF Lease, While Mack-Cali Represents Building Ownership in Securing Prestigious Tenant
By CoStar Research
October 7, 2009
In one of the largest office leases signed in New Jersey so far this year, Day Pitney LLP, a full-service law firm with approximately 375 attorneys, signed a long-term lease for 100,000 square feet at 1 Jefferson Road, a three-story, Class A office building recently completed in Parsippany, NJ.
The law firm will relocate from 200 Campus Drive in the Park Avenue at Morris County office campus in Florham Park and is leasing the entire Class A building.
1 Jefferson Road was the fourth and final building to be constructed at The Center of Morris County business campus, which totals 850,000 square feet and includes State Farm Insurance, Novartis Consumer Healthcare, and Deloitte as tenants.
The building�s ownership is a joint venture consisting of institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, The Hampshire Generational Fund, LLC, and Mack-Cali Realty Corp. (NYSE: CLI), which is responsible for the leasing and management of the building.
Thomas P. Welsh of Welsh Chester Galiney Matone Inc. represented the tenant, and Mack-Cali was represented in-house by James Nugent, senior director of leasing.
Rutgers hopes building will improve image
By tanya Batallas
September 18, 2009, 9:30AM
The new Rutgers Business School -- at $83 million, the most expensive building in university history -- opened its doors to students in Newark this month.
Administrators are proud of the facility's high-tech classrooms, stock trading floor and sweeping views of Manhattan. But they say its real value isn't visible yet: a fresh start for both town and gown.
"The concept is to pull the reputation of the city of Newark and Rutgers University up together," said business school dean Michael Cooper. "This is where the talent will be."
On the university side, Cooper hopes a dramatic expansion of the school's business program will jumpstart the downtown area.
Demand for business education is booming, he said, especially the science and technology-heavy courses that Rutgers offers.
About 3,200 undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students are enrolled, split between the Newark and Piscataway campuses. Both populations will double within three years, he said, making Rutgers "one of the largest programs in the world, by far."
Much of that growth will be absorbed in Newark and the gleaming 17-story office building at 1 Washington Park. Rutgers bought the first 11 floors, refurbishing most of them.
The university hopes it will boost foot traffic in the area, which includes the Broad Street light rail station, public library and Newark museum.
At the base of the building, 64 computers, two electronic signs with real-time stock prices and six clocks highlight a trading floor. Each computer has two monitors to facilitate rapid multi-tasking.
Inside, students sit in 30 classrooms, some with touch-screen podiums and others set up to record lectures. Six conference rooms can host video conferences with people across the globe.
During a break in a three-hour class session, finance professor Ben Sopranzetti gushed over his new home. "Students are energized," he said.
Sopranzetti said the facility lends a physical outline to the school's emerging spirit of collaboration -- both with industry and among professors.
As part of a new institute he leads, he said, MBA students took drew up six business plans for inventions by university researchers -- with three likely to become companies, an "unreal hit ratio."
And by centralizing faculty, the building is helping spur research ideas. A conversation with a supply chain management expert, he said, has already given him the idea for a new paper.
As a result of excitement over the building, city and university leaders both envision a revitalized Broad Street corridor. Cooper said the school will soon begin asking firms who left Newark in years past to consider returning.
Two years ago, after the project was announced, at least one business -- a law firm -- opted to return to the area, Pryor said. Like many other firms, he said, it had retreated to the suburbs.
"The outcome is spectacular," Pryor said. "The business school building is marvelous. The life it brings to that section of the northern downtown is enormously catalyzing."
Rutgers-Newark Chancellor Steven Diner said graduate students are reviewing proposals from jazz clubs and other potential tenants, with the goal of making Newark into a "24-hour city."
City leaders worked with Rutgers to recruit developers to the area from around the U.S., said Stefan Pryor, Newark's deputy mayor for economic development.
City leaders are also working on plans to bring a retail center to a 7-acre property along Orange Street, Pryor said.
For now, not even the physical dimensions of the project are complete. A few carts with drills and wrenches still dot the halls, in addition to flat-screen TVs.
But Cooper says the building's symbolism will soon -- and finally -- put the 80-year-old business school on the map.
"We're not Top 10 yet, but we will be shortly," he said.
Brian Whitley may be reached at (973) 392-7961 or bwhitley@starledger.com.
Mayor Cory Booker Puts Conan O'Brien On Newark Airport's "No Fly List"
Newark Mayor Cory Booker is putting Conan O'Brien on notice: slights to Newark will not be tolerated. Conan joked last week that Booker was setting up a program to improve the health of his city's residents - "the health care program would consist of a bus ticket out of Newark." After Booker touts the accomplishments and great traits of Newark, he brings down the hammer: "I'm also mayor of the city with one of the largest airports in the United States... I'm officially putting you on the Newark New jersey Airport No Fly List. Try JFK buddy." |
After cutting Newark deficit by $105M, Michelle Thomas officially appointed to business administrator post
By David Giambusso/The Star-Ledger
October 07, 2009, 7:46PM
NEWARK -- Michelle Thomas, the woman who steered the Newark budget through one of the worst economic crises in the city’s history, was officially appointed as the city’s business administrator today after filling the post in an acting capacity for nearly two years.
"It’s an affirmation whose time has come," said Mayor Cory Booker, congratulating the council on the vote, which passed among all six members present at today’s meeting.
Thomas, who is now the highest ranking non-elected official in City Hall, has been overseeing the city’s budget since January of 2008, after succeeding Bo Kemp in the post. Her appointment had been held up initially by questions of her experience, but after cutting the city’s deficit by more than half -- or $105 million -- Thomas has earned respect on all floors of City Hall where she oversees a bureaucracy of close to 5,000 employees.
"I think it’s a little overdue," said East Ward Councilman Augusto Amador after the vote, "She has a tremendous level of ability."
At-large councilman Donald Payne echoed that support.
"She has shown herself to be competent," he said, adding, "She is constantly advocating for the citizens of Newark and also fiscal constraint."
A North Carolina native and single mother, Thomas, 39, moved to New Jersey in 2004, where she worked as chief operating officer for BCT partners in Newark, before directing the mayor’s office of innovation and performance management. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in African American studies.
Thomas’ encyclopaedic familiarity with the city’s budget and budget processes is widely known throughout city hall.
"I live this," Thomas said today, while watching the council vote from a television in her office.
While adopting an approach of "pulling many different levers," Thomas said her central budgetary principles involve reducing the expansion of government spending, taking in as much federal money as possible, and ridding the city of its dependence on state municipal aid.
"The cost of government increases every year," Thomas said, but by reducing cost increases that are built into the budget, she added, "We will leave the city in a much better fiscal situation than when we inherited it."
Since taking over, Thomas said she has negotiated smaller annual pay increases with city unions, streamlined the city’s health care coverage, and drastically cut overtime, from clerks to cops.
She also said she has put the heat on tax and fee collection, where she cites a 3 percent increase in payroll tax collection, a 4 percent increase in parking fines, and a 105 percent increase in vital statistics fees, such as birth certificates and death certificates.
"These are recurring revenues, and that’s how you get there long-term," she said in advocating her endgame of a completely balanced budget.
But Thomas has also proven adept in pulling in federal dollars to bolster city services. So far Newark has received $126 million in federal stimulus dollars and grants, under Thomas’ direction.
"We’re being very aggressive. We have more than a dozen applications that are pending which, if approved, will bring in more than $100 million" more in federal money.
While City Hall today seemed unified in their support, questions remained as to why the appointment had taken so long.
"I had confronted the mayor on this on several occasions," Councilman Payne said. "I’ve been one of her earliest supporters."
At-Large Councilman Luis Quintana also referred questions of the delay to the mayor’s office but said, "I really congratulate her and the administration."
Booker said any delay was meant to ensure greater support for Thomas.
"I wanted to make sure every council member was on board," he said today. "We didn’t just want a majority vote. We wanted a unanimous vote."
