Reprinted from the October 16, 2013, issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper
New Corporate Campus Proposed for Scudders Mill Road
by Diccon Hyatt
Not so many years ago the
Scudders Mill Road corridor looked like a bleak spot on the commercial real
estate landscape. The big office complex at 800 Scudders Mill had been vacated
by Merrill Lynch and was about to lose Blackrock. The conference center next
door had gone through a series of different owners.
Now Novo Nordisk has refitted and transformed the 731,000-square-foot complex
at 800 Scudders Mill into the gleaming new headquarters for its North American
operations. The hotel space has both a Crowne Plaza Hotel and a Holiday Inn
Express.
Now comes word of a new neighbor hoping to move in next door — a proposed
720,000-square-foot Class A office and research campus at 700 Scudders Mill
Road.
The Plainsboro office of Los Angeles-based CBRE Group Inc. has been named
exclusive leasing agent for what is being called “the Green at Princeton.” Alec Monaghan of CBRE said the new
office campus is still in the planning stages, and has yet to secure tenants or
approvals from Plainsboro Township.
CBRE’s team of Monaghan, Joe Sarno, Jeremy Neuer, Adam Englander, and Wes
Moore will oversee the leasing and marketing campaign on behalf of the owners, Scudders Land Holdings LLC, a joint
venture between LCOR, Ivy Equities, and Intercontinental Real Estate
Corporation.
The campus at 700 Scudders Mill Road could comprise approximately five to six
buildings on more than 100 acres, including 60 acres of preserved open space
ensuring tenants will have expansive, unobstructed views. Existing neighboring
tenants include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk, Credit Suisse, Zurich Re
Insurance, Princeton Plasma Physics, Siemens, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
Sandoz, and NRG Energy.
Monaghan said the new office complex would be designed by LCOR and Ivy, which
were responsible for the overhaul of the Novo Nordisk headquarters next door to
the site. Like Novo’s headquarters, the new buildings will feature open floor
plans with glass-walled conference rooms. “The plan is to keep the window line
very much open,” Monaghan said. “Light just bleeds through the whole place.
It’s a huge advantage for the right user.”
Monaghan said that open floor plans
like this would be more appealing to high-tech companies. Law firms
and wealth management companies would be less interested in the space because
their office layouts favor privacy, he said.
The planned office park is called “The
Green” because of its environmentally friendly features, such as a
potential large solar panel array to provide power providing 7 megawatts of
power. The campus is planned to be LEED Platinum-certified, the highest level
of good environmental engineering.
The project also includes a high ratio of parking to office space, and could
increase that ratio even more if the tenants prefer a higher worker density.
Monaghan said the Princeton market is ideal for companies wanting to be near
New York without paying New York prices, and that campuses tend to do well
here. “People do want the campus environment in a suburban setting, where
there is energy and collaboration among tenants,” he said. “Princeton is a
unique market that doesn’t necessarily behave like the rest of the state.”
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