Crow Holdings Industrial announced Thursday it has acquired a 126-acre property in Carteret from Rahway Arch Properties and plans to break ground this summer on Crow Holdings at Carteret, a three-building, 1.2 million-square-foot speculative development.
The three buildings will range in size from 335,000 to 480,000 square feet and will each feature 40’ clear heights. The buildings — in the aggregate — will include 140 trailer parking spots, 174 dock doors and six drive-in ramps.
With the unprecedented demand for distribution centers in recent years — industrial vacancies have consistently hovered near zero — Crow Holdings officials feel the property will bring much-needed logistics space to a prime spot just off Exit 12 of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Stan Danzig, Jules Nissim and Kim Bach of Cushman & Wakefield will lease the space.
Clark Machemer, senior managing director of Crow Holdings Industrial, said the company hopes to deliver the first building in the first half of 2022. It can’t come soon enough to meet demand, he said.
More from Machemer:
“Several years into the transformation of the industrial real estate industry, developable land has become scarce in this region, and a parcel of this size on the Turnpike presents a very compelling opportunity,” he said. “With access to a strong labor pool and Carteret’s pro-business climate, the strategic location of this property makes it an unmatched spot for 21st-century industrial development.”
Carteret Mayor Daniel Reiman said the project is a perfect for the municipality.
“With e-commerce gaining steam over the past few years, my administration has long recognized the importance of industrial construction in our town’s economic redevelopment initiatives, and it’s exciting to see a national developer like Crow Holdings begin a project of this magnitude,” he said.
“Besides creating ratables, these industrial facilities will bring hundreds of union construction jobs and hundreds of full-time permanent jobs to Carteret residents, all of which will benefit the borough more broadly. While this once-abandoned site has been underutilized for many years, it’s exciting to see it begin the next chapter in its story as an economic engine that serves the needs of Carteret and surrounding areas.”
The property spent much of the 20th century operating as a historic industrial location for several manufacturing companies. Over the past decade, the property underwent environmental remediation through the leadership of Rahway Arch, ultimately receiving full approvals from New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection.
Rinaldo D’Argenio, Rahway Arch’s managing member, said the site will be a hit.
“The redevelopment of this site is good for the town as a tax ratable and because it brings more jobs,” he said. “Crow Holdings’ proven ability to deliver and close on complicated transactions is further evidenced by its acquisition of the property.”
For Crow Holdings Industrial, this development comes months after the company’s first marquee property sale in the Northeast, the $164 million disposition of 50 Veronica Ave., a newly built 925,000-square-foot property in Franklin Township, which is fully leased to LG Electronics USA.
Coming just two years after Crow Holdings commenced industrial development operations in the region, the transaction — one of the largest single-asset industrial property sales in the country during the pandemic — immediately established Crow Holdings as one of the most capable developers in the Northeast.
