Matrix Buys 342,000-SF Park

CRANBURY, NJ-Locally based Matrix Development Group is the new owner of Mid-Atlantic Corporate Center, an 82-acre property encompassing 13 buildings and 342,000 square feet. The mix of office, lab and flex space straddles this city’s border with Monroe Twp. in the New Jersey Turnpike Exit 8A submarket, with 2,000 feet of frontage along that route.

The deal was arranged for Matrix by Steve Tolkach, managing principal of the Princeton office of Newmark Knight Frank. Seller Preferred Unlimited of Conshohocken, PA was represented in-house by Larry Doyle, and by brokers from Hamilton, NJ-based NAI Fennelly. The sale price was not disclosed. Preferred Unlimited, then known as Preferred Real Estate Investments, acquired the property from Paris-based chemical firm Rhodia Group in 2005 for a reported $35 million.

The property had served as the North American headquarters campus for Rhodia, and the latter has maintained a smaller leased presence on-site in the wake of that earlier sale. Much of the space was subsequently put on the market for lease by Preferred as part of a multi-tenant repositioning, and availabilities at the time of this latest sale were listed with asking prices of $22.50 per square foot for office, $16.50 per square foot for flex and $7.50 a foot for flex/industrial.