Silverman Buys Third NJ Office, Rebrands Trio as Corporate Campus

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Call it the opportunistic office park. Having just purchased the 133,000-square-foot office building at 106 Allen Road in Basking Ridge, N.J., The Silverman Group, of Short Hills, N.J., will now rebrand that building, and two adjacent ones it bought in the last few years, into The Offices at Liberty Corner, a 525,000-square-foot Class A corporate campus.

The seller of 106 Allen was Mack-Cali Realty Corp., Edison, N.J., and the closing was on July 10, Bill Brown, senior director at C&W, told Commercial Property Executive. The transaction’s terms were not disclosed.

Cushman & Wakefield, which already had been serving as exclusive leasing agent for Silverman’s adjacent 150 and 110 Allen Road, will now handle the entire campus, which is sited at Exit 33 of I-78.

106 Allen is nearly half empty, having 61,000 square feet of vacant space, ranging from 2,000 square feet up to a full floor of 40,000 square feet.

Mack-Cali and SJP Properties, of Parsippany, N.J., were the developers of 106 Allen, which was completed in 2000, a Silverman spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive.

Silverman purchased the adjacent, 190,000-square-foot office at 150 Allen Road in 2010 and later brought that building to full occupancy. In 2011, it bought the 202,000-square-foot 110 Allen Road and was subsequently able to drive vacancy there down to 11,000 square feet. The seller in each case was TA Associates Realty, Boston, according to the Silverman spokesperson.

There was no grand plan to assemble the three properties into a corporate campus with shared amenities, the Silverman spokesperson said. Rather, the buyer jumped on separate opportunities to buy the three buildings and eventually market them together.

“Strategically, we saw the acquisition of 106 Allen as a way to incorporate an office campus feel with shared amenities amongst all three buildings,” Silverman president Blake Silverman said in a press release.

Each of the buildings will offer a new coffee/food kiosk, renovated common areas and other building improvements. 150 Allen Road already has a fitness center and conference space, and a fitness center is planned for 110 Allen Road. New signage will provide the properties with a common identity.

Current tenants at The Offices at Liberty Corner include Ace Insurance, Oracle, Matheson Tri-Gas, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals, Cornerstone Relocation Group, Wells Fargo, Mylan Specialty L.P. and Fireman’s Fund.

If Silverman and Cushman & Wakefield can lease up 106 Allen half as well as they have the other two buildings, they’ll be bucking the trend. Figures obtained from Marcus & Millichap indicate that the average office vacancy in northern New Jersey will hit 20 percent this year.