The Blau & Berg Company brokered the lease deal for ContainerPort.

Hartz is headquartered in Secaucus. It owns about 200 properties with more than 38 million square feet, mostly in the northern New Jersey/New York area.

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ROBBINSVILLE, NJ-While a bit of a lull has set in for leasing deals in New Jersey's industrial sector in the last few months, development continues briskly this summer with more than 2.3 million square feet of industrial product under way in New Jersey.

KTR Capital Partners has started work on the largest industrial construction project in the state since 2007. KTR is building a 1 million-square-foot distribution center for Amazon.com in Robbinsville. The project is supposed to come online by the end of 2014.

A number of other projects – new construction and redevelopment – are under way or about to begin in communities around Port Elizabeth and Port Newark.

Jones Lang LaSalle says that industrial vacancy rose slightly in northern and central NJ during the second quarter, as two large projects were completed: IDI finished work on the 750,000-square-foot Middlesex Center II in South Brunswick for Williams-Sonoma, which will fully occupy it. Also, The Hampshire Cos. completed a 232,000-square-foot distribution center in Carteret.

The vacancy rate rose from 8.7% to 8.8%, according to JLL. Year-over-year, though, average vacancy rates have fallen, from 8.9%; also, average asking rents have increased 2.1% .

Steve Bussel of Bussel Realty says the increased demand in the port area as the region prepares for the opening of the widened Panama Canal will generate more redevelopment projects. He noted an uptick in REITs acquiring older properties within a 20-30 mile radius of the port, with plans to build new “high-cube” warehouses.

“With the lack of buildable land in north and central New Jersey, the key to this cycle is not development, but redevelopment,” says Bussel. “What is today's industrial building past its prime is tomorrow's development opportunity if it sits on a location with proximity to the port.”

JLL also noted a flurry of investment sales in the second quarter. The biggest acquisition was by Duke Realty Corp., which bought two adjacent Class A warehouse facilities in Cranbury that are leased long-term to Crate & Barrel for $75.3 million.

“Touring activity has remained brisk for the Class A and Class B spaces available,” JLL said in its report, “which means that further tightening and additional construction activity may be forthcoming.”

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