Devastated Companies Scramble for Space

JERSEY CITY-Reports have been circulating that all available sublease space in this waterfront city was gone within 48 hours after terrorists dealt their deadly blow to Lower Manhattan. “I’ve heard those reports, but I can’t verify the accuracy,” David E. Knee, executive vice president of Binswanger/Klatskin, the Teterboro, NJ-based commercial real estate firm, tells GlobeSt.com. “But a lot of the companies that have been devastated are obviously looking for space.”

“The waterfront is going to see whatever kind of availabilities they have get taken,” adds Douglas H. Haynes, managing principal of CRESA Partners/New Jersey, which until recently was the corporate services arm of Alexander Summer. “That’s particularly true with the online trading firms like Charles Schwab and Knight Trading, who were just committing to the Lefrak Organization’s project at Newport [in Jersey City].”

As far as the situation in general, “business will go on and people are going to need facilities,” Haynes tells GlobeSt.com. “We’re seeing evidence of this in the outer markets, like Parsippany and along the I-78 corridor in the Berkeley Heights area, where some sublets are available from AT&T. We’ve already heard that a lot of the sublet spaces for Aventis Pharmaceuticals have already been spoken for.”