LEBANON, NJ—Colliers International has arranged the $5.8 million sale of two class-A office buildings at 100 Corporate Drive and 200 Corporate Drive, located at 78 Corporate Center in Lebanon, New Jersey.

The three-story buildings, totaling 185,866 square feet, feature a masonry brick veneer façade, insulated glass, and elevators. The 92,925-square-foot property at 100 Corporate Drive is currently 39 percent occupied and includes a recently renovated common area. The 92,941-square-foot 200 Corporate Drive is vacant and ideal for a single tenant, but its 30,000-square-foot floor plates can accommodate multi-tenanting. This property also includes a full service cafeteria. 

“This one was a more difficult sale, because the assets had been taken from the original owner, they were in the hands of a special servicer, there was a lot of deferred maintenance,” Jeffrey Oram, executive managing director at Colliers International tells GlobeSt.com exclusively. “When you have something like that it's not easy to create a competitive process.”

Oram says Colliers tried to sell the properties through Auction.com, but didn't get to a price level acceptable to the controlling class of debt held by the special servicer.

Colliers marketed the properties extensively to office and even multifamily investors, thinking redevelopers might “take the buildings down and put up some kind of residential,” Oram says.

The properties were eventually sold to an office investor. “We had to really push a lot of different angles and go out to people we'd never even talked to before,” he says. “And we sold it to someone we never did business with before.”

Oram says the Lebanon area is attractive to companies with a lot of employees living in Pennsylvania, because Interstate 78 is a major corridor for commuter traffic east to Bridgewater, NJ.

“Where this sits, you're not getting totally crushed by rush hour traffic coming into Bridgewater, and it's not so far out that you might as well go to Pennsylvania,” he says. “If you have a lot of employees in Pennsylvania, it's not a bad commute, if you still need to be in New Jersey.”

Oram and managing director Jacklene Chesler represented the seller, Torchlight Investors, in the transaction. They also procured the buyer, a New Jersey-based private investor.

Oram says new ownership will immediately benefit from 100 Corporate Drive's in-place cash flow from its existing, quality tenants, the opportunity to lease the vacant space, and the ability to redevelop 200 Corporate Drive.

“The two buildings are well-positioned in the Hunterdon County office market on Interstate 78, with tremendous visibility from the highway, easy access to the area's outstanding amenities, and close proximity to the adjacent Courtyard Hanover Lebanon, a Marriot hotel, and route 287,” says Chesler.