Cushman & Wakefield of New Jersey, Inc. 
One Meadowlands Plaza, Suite 1100
East Rutherford, New Jersey 07073
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Release Date: Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Media Contact: Evelyn Weiss Francisco (201) 796-7788
Property Located within Exit 8a Industrial Submarket
SOUTH BRUNSWICK, NJ, Jan.15, 2014 – Commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield has completed the sale of 51 Commerce Drive, a 222,536-square-foot industrial building located in South Brunswick, N.J. Ivy Realty purchased the property from the seller, Commerce SRG LLC, represented by Cushman and Wakefield’s Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group (CMG).
The East Rutherford CMG team included Andrew Merin, David Bernhaut, Gary Gabriel, Brian Whitmer and Kyle Schmidt, who worked closely with the Frank Caccavo/Jason Goldman team based at the firm’s Edison office.
Completed in 1983, 51 Commerce Drive is 96-percent occupied by three tenants including Lenox Corporation, which operates its 54,000-square-foot outlet store at the building. The property sits within the 8A Industrial Submarket at the NJ Turnpike interchange along Cranbury South River Road.
This transaction was noteworthy for a number of reasons according to Gary Gabriel.
“We had a tremendous response to the offering, given the dramatic improvement of the 8A market since the depths of the recession.”
In fact, activity in the market overall is up according to CMG research: Exit 8A is benefitting from significantly increased tenant activity, and sales activity reached its highest level in recent history. To highlight this trend, three buildings greater than 800,000 square feet were sold at 8A for an average of $85.98 per square foot in 2013.
However, the building had a number of short-term leases when the seller placed it on the market. This was a deterrent for some buyers. “It took a full-service owner/developer like Ivy Realty with experience and resources to recognize the strength and potential of the market and the opportunity at 51 Commerce Drive,” Gabriel said.
“51 Commerce is an opportunity for Ivy to utilize its skilled team to re-position and market an extremely well-located industrial property in a submarket that has seen dramatic improvement,” said David Nenner, executive vice president of Ivy Realty.
Located in the geographic center of the Boston-Washington D.C. corridor, the 8A corridor is situated 45 miles southwest of Manhattan and 60 miles northeast of Philadelphia. This location enables distributors to reach more than 130 million consumers, one-third of the North American population, within a one day drive. National and international tenants are attracted to the submarket’s superior highway access and proximity to the New York/New Jersey ports and Newark Liberty International Airport.
Based in East Rutherford, N.J., Cushman & Wakefield’s Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group specializes exclusively in investment sales of office, industrial, multifamily and retail properties throughout New Jersey, New York, Fairfield County, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The team has completed more than $17 billion worth of transactions since 2000.
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About Ivy Realty
Ivy Realty, http://www.ivy-realty.com/, is a fully integrated real estate operating company with over 5 million square feet of commercial property investments. The firm offers asset and property management, construction and leasing services in the Northeastern corridor of the U.S., including New York and New Jersey, and in Southeast Florida. The firm is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut.