An undisclosed buyer acquired 15 acres of prime industrial property in Somerset for $30.75 million, according to a Thursday announcement from CBRE.
Located at 200 Cottontail Lane, the property was purchased with the intent of repositioning the existing 209,000-square-foot office building and constructing a brand new, state-of-the-art warehouse distribution center by its client, the new owner.
The CBRE Investment Properties team of Mark Silverman, Elli Klapper, Charles Berger and Jeremy Wernick, in conjunction with Kevin Dudley of CBRE’s Industrial & Logistics Group, secured the acquisition on behalf of the buyer.
“Our client’s focus on investing in logistics assets in key development markets across the U.S. has helped them amass a development pipeline of more than $5.6 billion and over 3,000 properties. This is one of the numerous off-market deals we have been involved in in the Somerset area in the past few years,” Silverman said. “There continues to be significant interest in industrial repositioning due to the supply chain pipeline issues being seen worldwide and lack of developable industrial land in New Jersey. We had to move quickly to secure this property for our client, who is excited to develop a high-quality warehouse facility in an extremely tight industrial market.”
Built in 1986, 200 Cottontail Lane is a multistory office building that had seen a spike in vacancy levels over recent years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With Franklin Township rezoning its Corporate Business District to allow for various industrial uses, this property became a prime candidate for redevelopment.
“Having had knowledge of the impending zoning change within Franklin Township months before it took effect, we were able to source several opportunities for our client in Somerset and the surrounding area,” Klapper added. “The emergence of the (Interstate) 287 Corridor as one of New Jersey’s new premier industrial submarkets is something that we are proud to be a part of.”
