“We're longterm property owners,” Spinweber says. “We have held buildings for generations sometimes, and when we get those buildings back, they're not always on the cutting edge, functionality-wise.”

Sudler doesn't convert old buildings into apartments or offices; its sole arena is the industrial market. “But we do adaptive re-use work every day, to fit out old buildings for today's market,” he says.

He cites Sudler's various moves to create data-centers out of older industrial and “flex” space. Exhibit A, of course, would be Sudler's conversion of three old buildings in Cranbury for modern use as disaster-recovery and data/technology centers. Recently, Sudler leased one of them, a long-vacant former insurance company office with 495,000 square feet, to the digital technology company, Lam Cloud Management, for 25 years.

Also, Sudler is continuing to develop the Piscataway area as a data-center marketplace. Piscataway is a secondary market for technology operations compared to The Meadowlands, where CommVault is building a huge complex that will total 650,000 square feet and CoreSite recently opened its 280,000-square-foot NY2 site that is fiber-connected to NY1 in Manhattan.

However, the market is still within “the ring of synchronicity” for Manhattan's giant corporate data generators, i.e., close enough and powered-up enough to make it a viable back-up technology site. “There is adequate power, utilities, and fiber in the ground laid during the Pharma' and technology boom back in the '80s, that provide a good starter-kit for data center operations,” Spinweber says.

Sudler developed a major data center there for Barclay's Bank two years ago.

Meryl Gonchar of law firm Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith & Davis will moderate the RealShare session on development