Global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. will bring its more than 700 New Jersey employees to a new office at Ironside Newark.
The plan, first reported by Real Estate New Jersey, involves the company bringing its employees at offices in Summit and Jersey City to Ironside, the Edison Properties building that sits next to Mulberry Commons and down from the Prudential Center.
The move is expected to take place in the second half of 2024.
Jeff Lewis, McKinsey’s senior partner in New Jersey, said the move makes sense for a number of reasons.
“We want to invest where it matters,” he told Real Estate NJ. “We think Newark matters to New Jersey. It’s New Jersey’s largest city and it represents entrepreneurship, resilience and diversity. It’s an environment we would like to be part of our next chapter overall, and we want to have our community together.”
Lewis said Newark’s mass transit network, highway connectivity and its access to local, regional and global destinations were a factor in the decision. As was the city’s vibrant business community.
“It’s a vibrant city,” he said. “I think it has an exciting value proposition for our colleagues for what we do — being embedded in a business community, being embedded in a college campus community, being surrounded by amenities and being part of a continued growth story for the city. I think all of those are exciting parts of the value proposition for our colleagues.”
The consulting giant would be among the latest tenants at Ironside Newark, a historic warehouse that Edison Properties restored and repurposed into 456,000 square feet of office and retail space.
The building is home to Mars Wrigley Confectionary’s North American headquarters, as well as architecture firm Ware Malcomb, law firms Pearlman & Miranda and Robinson Miller and Edison Properties’ headquarters, all of which benefit from its location.
That location will only get better when the recently announced bridge connecting Mulberry Commons to Newark Penn Station and the Ironbound is completed, potentially in the first quarter of 2025.
McKinsey established its offices in Jersey City in 2008 and Summit in 2012. The move will help the company create a workplace more suitable for the future, Lewis said.
“Both of our offices were designed more than a decade ago, and the idea is to design the space for the way we work today,” he said. “We’ve historically had a very hybrid-type culture because a significant amount of our colleagues work on client sites and have always done that.
“So, this will create the opportunity to work remotely, work on client sites, work with clients at our site and continue what we’ve always done.”
