Northern Bergen office vacancies skyrocket as companies flee New Jersey’s Anti Business Climate

Northern Bergen office vacancies skyrocket as companies flee New Jersey’s Anti Business Climate

MARCH 29, 2015    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY LINDA MOSS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD

* Shifting preferences are likely to alter the look of many now-empty large corporate campuses

Northern Bergen County, once a magnet for corporations, has lost some of its luster as a number of companies leave the area, sending its office vacancy rate soaring to nearly 40 percent, according to one real estate firm.

In the first quarter so far, the northern corridor of the county, including towns like Montvale and Park Ridge, had 2.25 million square feet of its total 5.8 million square feet of office space unoccupied, according to JLL, a real estate firm with offices in East Rutherford.

That translates to a 39 percent vacancy rate in the quarter, up 70 percent from the year-ago period’s 23 percent, JLL reported.

The Hertz Corp.’s former headquarters in Park Ridge, a 226,000-square-foot property, is on the block after the auto-rental giant’s relocation to Estero, Fla. And Pearson Education’s exit a few months ago from its leafy campus in Upper Saddle River added 475,000 square feet of vacant office space.

“You’ve got almost a million square feet just in Montvale,” said JLL Managing Director Tom Reilly.

Vacancy rates could rise even higher when Mercedes-Benz USA moves its U.S. headquarters from Montvale, where it has three buildings, to Atlanta over the next couple of years. That relocation, announced in January, would add as much as 310,300 square feet of vacant space in the region.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/business/the-wide-open-office-spaces-1.1298328