FLORHAM PARK, NJ-It’s not exactly a street in the traditional sense, but when it means you’re ranked among the top 20 office markets in the United States, semantics really don’t matter. At least not to the owner and operator of Campus Drive at Park Avenue at Morris County, which placed 20th on Jones Lang LaSalle’s annual listing of the most expensive office streets in North America.
Campus Drive’s $38 per square foot average full service rent makes it the most expensive in New Jersey. As important is that the average market rent for the rest of the metro area is $27.99 per square foot. Not bad for a 20-year-old, 1.2 million-square-foot project.
“It was a high-quality property when it was developed, and it has always maintained a high image occupancy with tenants like Arthur Anderson, Price Waterhouse and McKinsey,” says Charles A. Valentino, senior VP of Newport Beach, CA-based KBS Realty Advisors, the owner of Park Avenue at Morris.
By comparison, Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, CA, ranked first at $114 per square foot followed by Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, at $97 per square foot. “Rents for office space in these streets were almost 90 percent higher than the average rents in the same metropolitan area,” says John Sikaitis, senior VP of research at Jones Lang LaSalle, in a statement. “Location is everything in real estate and this study proves it. Despite economic conditions, demand for these prime and often prestigious addresses continues to be high.”
Park Avenue at Morris County currently is 93.5% occupied. Other tenants include Accenture, wealth management firms such as JP Morgan and Ameriprise, and law firms, which work well with the affluence of the surrounding community.
“The demographics are high, with an average household income twice the national average,” Valentino says. Florham Park’s average household income is $135,470, the company says, compared with $123,081 in Morris County, $89,017 in New Jersey, and $67,517 for the United States.
“For the most part, the state has been very, very slowly recovering,” notes Greg Barkan, senior VP of CB Richard Ellis, which operates the project. Yet space has regularly been re-leased at Park Avenue at Morris throughout the downturn.
“Along Park Avenue, you literally have new construction happening,” Barkan says. “It’s almost unheard of for speculative building. Our little park is not an island. ”
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