Uh-Oh Oreos: Nabisco Cookie Plant in NJ, One of Just Three in U.S., Is Shutting Down

 

For six decades, residents of one New Jersey town have enjoyed the sweet smell of fresh baked cookies. But on Friday, that’s all about to end.

The Nabisco plant in Fair Lawn is closing, and worse than the delightful smell leaving their lives, the shuttering plant is also leaving hundreds of people out of a job. The massive site on Route 208 has been a part of the landscape for as long as some folks can remember.

There are currently only three like the plant left in the U.S., after having more than a dozen churning out Oreos and Chips Ahoy! cookies. Some have spent more than half their lives working at the facility.

Jimmy Figs started on the Fig Newton line 48 years ago, and pins the move on “corporate greed.”

“They have two or three plants down in Mexico, and that’s not good, that’s taking away a lot of our work. Don’t let them bullcrap you, the work’s going down there,” Figs said.

Understandably, he wasn’t the only one bitter about the decision.

“If you can pay people $3 or $4 an hour to do what we’re doing, why wouldn’t you?” said Cheryl Leahy.

While losing the familiar neighbor will be painful for the town, the land won’t sit dormant for long, said Fair Lawn’s mayor.

“We’ve already heard from developers who want that property. It’s 39.7 acres that we’re going to keep industrial, and heard from a number of developers who are interested in distribution centers,” Mayor Kurt Peluso said, adding that one has pitched adding a Wegman’s at the location, which was his favorite so far.

Whatever comes in will bring jobs along with it, and a number of area businesses have offered to help. But the workers say it will never be the same.

“Nothing lasts forever, you gotta make use of what we have, appreciate what we have, thank God and make the best of every day,” said Calvert Smith, who is set to retire after working at the plant for 30 years.

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

For more information about Philly industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Court Street Ventures Buys Erie Avenue Industrial Building, Will Raze a Portion for New Construction

A New Jersey investor has purchased 956 E. Erie Ave., a roughly 800,000-square-foot building on 19 acres in Northeast Philadelphia, with plans to tear down a portion of the existing structure and build 381,200 square feet of new warehouse space on speculation.

The goal is to seize on the continued demand for industrial space, particularly newly constructed, in Northeast Philadelphia and across the region.

Court Street Ventures bought the property, which takes up a city block, for an undisclosed price and the transaction had yet to be publicly recorded. The seller, Shift Capital, paid $3.47 million for the property in 2016.

Located across from the Philadelphia Coca-Cola bottling plant, the building was originally developed by what is now Crown Holdings and has been leased to various tenants over the years including Progress Lighting.

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

For more information about Philly industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Bimbo Bakeries USA Opens New Facility in Conshohocken to Distribute Entenmann’s, Other Brands

Bimbo Bakeries USA has completed a new 71,218 square-foot facility in Conshohocken that will serve as its main distribution center in the Mid-Atlantic for a dozen of the company’s brands such as Sara Lee and Arnold.

The building at 100 Academy Drive replaces its former distribution center at 1113 W. Ridge Pike, which was constructed in 1959 for Stroehmann. E. Kahn Development Co. bought that property last year for $6.85 million and plans to develop a distribution center for Amazon.

Bimbo declined to disclose the cost of the new project on Academy Drive. A total of 190 employees will work from the new building, which is owned by Bimbo. At one point, Tasty Baking Co. had owned the property, according to Montgomery County property records.

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

For more information about Philly industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

After Two Years, Northeast Philadelphia Building Leased to Amazon Sells for More Than Double

Less than two years after buying a 65,856-square-foot building in Northeast Philadelphia for $4.4 million, Abrams Realty Development has sold it for $9.75 million.

The value of the building at 13200 Townsend Road more than doubled, primarily as the result of a new tenant. Earlier this year, Amazon.com Inc. leased the entire structure for one of its last-mile distribution centers.

Abrams Realty bought the building on 7.3 acres in August 2019 from pharmaceutical firm Lannett Co. Inc. and had plans, through affiliate Farm Works Realty, to establish a state-of-the-art hydroponic facility to grow lettuce. When the pandemic hit, Abrams decided to pull back on those plans.

Abrams instead temporarily leased the building to McDaniel Trucking and Federal Express, and then leased it to Amazon this past February. The e-commerce retailer has ramped up leasing buildings for its last-mile distribution network as consumers began to rely more on online shopping during the pandemic.

Earlier this year, Northbridge, which focuses on buying last-mile distribution centers, paid $25.5 million to buy a four-building industrial portfolio in Northeast Philadelphia. Those buildings total 281,000 square feet and are located in the Byberry East and Byberry West part of the Philadelphia Industrial Park at 2722 Commerce Way, 2801-17 Southampton Road, 2825-45 Southampton Road, and 2191 Hornig Road.

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

For more information about Philly Industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Brandywine Realty Trust Dips Toe into Industrial Real Estate with Latest Proposal

Brandywine Realty Trust is proposing to develop two industrial buildings off of Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia in a move that veers from its focus on developing and owning trophy office buildings.

The Philadelphia real estate investment trust wants to build a 338,208-square-foot structure and a companion 330,700-square-foot structure at 15000 Roosevelt Blvd. on 50 acres zoned as a Keystone Opportunity Zone, according to documents filed with Philadelphia. A KOZ provides breaks on certain state and local taxes for tenants who would move into the buildings.

Plans involve parking for 559 vehicles. The complex would be called the Byberry North Business Center.

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

For more information about Philly Industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Amazon Now Encircles the Philadelphia Region with Over 50 Warehouses

When Connor Lord first arrived at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in West Deptford Township, he was staggered by the sheer size of the place. After driving through the traffic light to the north of the warehouse, its massive bulk dwarfed everything else in this stretch of suburban South Jersey.

“It’s intimidating at first seeing this big building, it looked twice the size of the Linc,” said Lord, who worked as an apprentice carpenter at the Eagles stadium.

By square footage, none of Amazon’s facilities in the Philadelphia area can match Lincoln Financial Field. But the company has infrastructure under construction in the region that comes close to the stadium’s size, like a forthcoming mega-warehouse in New Castle, Del., or the new fulfillment center in Carneys Point, New Jersey, down the river from the West Deptford facility.

Both of these warehouses will be well more than a million square feet once completed and are among nine new Amazon facilities that the company has announced for the region in the next year, with more in the works. That’s in addition to 14 sites added in 2020 across the Lehigh Valley, South Jersey, northern Delaware, Philadelphia, and its collar counties.

According to the CoStar Group, Amazon now has 57 buildings online or underway, across this greater Philadelphia region. Real estate and industry analysts say they have never seen anything like the company’s explosive expansion.

“They’ve been gobbling up distribution space for more than five years in a big way, but the pandemic really accelerated that growth,” said Adrian Ponsen, director of analytics with CoStar Group in Philadelphia. “There’s no single company that’s anywhere near on the scale of what they’re doing.”

Amazon’s expansion in Philadelphia is part of a worldwide hiring spree sparked by the pandemic. The company added roughly 500,000 employees in 2020, according to company filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including 400,000 in the United States. Amazon hired nearly 175,000 people from October through December alone, far more than in any prior fourth quarter. The e-commerce giant employed 950,000 Americans as of last year, a company spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, the company has grown its real estate footprint by 50% year-over-year in 2020, company executives told investors in February.Amazon now has more than 800 warehouses across the United States.

It’s not hard to see why the company is expanding. Amazon has done phenomenally well during 2020. Its already strong share price grew steadily throughout the early months of the pandemic, reaching its highest-ever level in September, as its fleets of trucks and legions of workers kept stay-at-home Americans well-supplied. In addition to delivering items, Amazon is the nation’s largest cloud computing company and has a leading video streaming service. Already the world’s wealthiest man, the company’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, saw his net worth grow by more than $60 billion in the last year, to $190 billion, Forbes estimated this month.

Amazon’s warehouse jobs start at $15 an hour, while the company’s coveted high-paying positions are massing in other locations on the Northeast corridor. The second headquarters is being opened near Washington and 7,000 highly paid white-collar Amazon jobs are now located in Boston. In New York City, the company purchased the former Lord & Taylor flagship on Fifth Avenue as a hub for tech workers.

In the Philadelphia region during the pandemic, Amazon began hiring for tens of thousands of jobs in its vast network of warehouses. The e-commerce giant posted more than 35,000 job openings in 2020, by far the most of any employer in the metropolitan area, according to the nonprofit University City District. The next closest was Lowe’s and Penn Medicine, which posted about 5,000 jobs each last year.

Amazon’s presence in the local labor market has grown exponentially. The 35,000 job postings were a roughly 1,600% increase from 2019. The University City District used data from Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston software firm that scrapes the internet for public job postings. Amazon does not make regional-wide breakdowns available but said that it now has 25,000 full- and part-time workers in Pennsylvania. Most of its infrastructure is concentrated in the southeast corner of the state.

*Article courtesy of The Inquirer

For more information about Philly Industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Bridge Development Partners Sets its Sights on Philadelphia for Industrial Investment

As Bridge Development Partners begins construction on the second and final phase of Bridge Point 78 in central New Jersey, the real estate company is turning its attention to Philadelphia.

The Chicago-based developer, in partnership with DH Property Holdings, landed a lease with TJX Cos. last year for a 283,000-square-foot build-to-suit at 9801 Blue Grass Road in Philadelphia. Bridge is hopeful the build-to-suit for TJX Cos. – which operates the TJ Maxx, Marshalls and Home Goods retail chains – is the first of many industrial deals it will eventually have in Philadelphia.

“We found that right in the middle of Covid,” said Jeff Milanaik, a partner with Bridge who oversees buying and developing industrial buildings throughout the Northeast. “There are other sites we are looking at and we are very much focusing on Philadelphia.”

Bridge is a privately-owned company formed in 2000 that focuses on industrial development. In the time since Milanaik joined the company in 2014, Bridge has amassed more than 12.5 million square feet of industrial space across the Northeast valued at $2.6 billion. Bridge Point 78 is among the crown jewels in that portfolio.

Located in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, the industrial center has been developed on a former Ingersoll Rand manufacturing site that was “very complicated,” Milanaik said. “We weren’t afraid to take on challenges but the magnitude to take this on was huge.”

Environmental remediation along with its hilly topography made development challenging at the 400-acre site and $50 million was spent on site work alone. Bridge partnered with Texas Teachers Retirement System to develop Bridge Point 78 in two phases to manage the risk of constructing a total of six buildings with 3.86 million square feet.

The first phase consisted of four buildings totaling 2.2 million square feet and the second phase, now underway, involves two buildings – one totaling 1.4 million square feet and another at 262,500 square feet – all on 100 acres.

That risk, however, was coupled with the reality that demand for large warehouse-distribution buildings remains high in the New Jersey market where land is constrained, Milanaik said. With the first phase, Bridge moved ahead with building 975,000 square feet on speculation and soon leased it to Uniqlo Co.

“That really validated the park,” he said.

The remainder of the buildings in the first phase leased up to Scotts Miracle-Gro and Mark Anthony Brands, a beverage distributor. Last October, Bridge sold the first phase for $275 million to PGIM Real Estate.

“We’re really bullish that we’re at the right place at the right time,” Milanaik said.

That goes for the Philadelphia region as well and Bridge’s focus on it. “I like that market a lot,” he said. “It’s the eighth fastest growing MSA in the country. My sons went to Villanova and lived in Center City and I got comfortable with the city, and the supply of modern distribution buildings are lacking. We have taken a real liking to it.”

When it comes to investment and development, Milanaik said he’d “like to be as close to Center City as I can.”

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

For more information about Philly Industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

International Paper Pays $11.6M for Warehouse in Chester County

International Paper Co. has paid $11.6 million for a 415,700-square-foot warehouse in West Sadsbury, a rural enclave on the far western edges of Chester County where it abuts Lancaster County.

The building at 4581 Lower Valley Road was sold by VMM Eckman Management, an entity affiliated with J.D. Eckman, a Reading company that does highway construction, according to Chester County property records.

Thomas J. Ryan, a spokesman for International Paper, confirmed the purchase and said the company would disclose its plans for the building at a later date. Bill Beers, zoning officer for West Sadsbury, said he toured the building with a representative from International Paper. “They are going to use it for warehousing, basically for box storage,” Beers said.

International Paper operates another facility in Chester County in Toughkenamon in addition to maintaining several warehouses and production plants in Pennsylvania and South Jersey.

The West Sadsbury building sits on 42 acres. As it is currently configured, a portion of the building is office space.

International Paper is based in Memphis, Tennessee. Industrial packaging – the boxes used in e-commerce and to store and move products such as fruits, vegetables, beverages and durable good such as refrigerators – accounts for 70% of the company’s revenue. Its packaging is also used in the health care and pharmaceutical industries. The company also makes paper used for printers, books and labels among other items.

*Article courtesy of Philadelphia Business Journal

For more information about Philly Industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Leasing Keeping Pace With Philadelphia’s Distribution Center Building Boom

With a fresh round of stimulus checks hitting households’ bank accounts, retail spending surging and consumers still gravitating towards online shopping as a means of social distancing, the economic backdrop could hardly be more supportive of the burgeoning distribution sector.

Even as the volume of distribution centers under construction has skyrocketed by 70% in the Philadelphia area during the past six months, leasing has largely kept pace.

Just in the past 12 months, tenants such as Amazon, Target, Elogistic and DNA Motoring have leased more than 13 million square feet worth of 21st century distribution space in the Philadelphia metropolitan area alone.

In that light, it’s easy to see how the market’s current tally of 10 million square feet worth of unleased, modern distribution centers, which is mostly made up of properties currently under construction, could be nearly fully leased less than 18 months from now.

But supply risk is not completely out of the picture. Massive, long-term redevelopments projects continue to push through the planning stages.

By this summer, NorthPoint is planning to start the first phase of its redevelopment of the former U.S. Steel Plant in Lower Bucks County, which could eventually be home to 15 million square feet of new industrial space. Hilco is also planning a 15 million-square-foot industrial campus to eventually take shape at the site of the former SEC Oil Refinery in Southwest Philadelphia.

Investors and developers will need to keep a watchful eye on construction tallies over the next several months. As the pandemic abates, households may likely shift spending away from e-commerce and back towards in-person services, such as restaurants and entertainment, which could cause distribution leasing to soften, even as more speculative construction accumulates.

But a portion of the pandemic-induced shift to e-commerce spending and at-home delivery will likely be permanent. For now, developers can’t seem to build distribution centers fast enough, and the Philadelphia industrial market’s stellar performance looks set to continue well into 2021.

*Article courtesy of CoStar

For more information about Philly Industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.

Bucks County Distribution Center Leased by Amazon Sells for $21.3 Million

Demonstrating continued demand for infill facilities across the greater Philadelphia region, a recently redeveloped last-mile distribution center fully leased by Amazon in Levittown has sold for $21.3 million, more than double the price it fetched when it last traded hands in 2019.

Built in 1963, the last-mile distribution facility underwent a multimillion-dollar renovation between 2018 and 2019 to upgrade functionality. The renovated facility now features new exterior panels, new HVAC equipment, new car and trailer parking, expansion of vacant land for conversion to additional car and van parking, new LED lights and a new roof. Amazon leased the distribution center in October 2020, according to CoStar data.

The Amazon facility is situated on a 9.9-acre parcel that has immediate access to Interstates 95 and 476 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, providing the e-commerce titan access to nearly 2 million people within a 30-minute drive. 

Philadelphia’s industrial market faces some challenges, from the region’s recently pummeled economy and from speculative construction. But retailers’ ongoing shift to e-commerce sales and faster deliveries have been driving industrial leasing as tenants store most of their inventory in local logistics centers as close to their customers as they can, Adrian Ponsen, CoStar’s director of market analytics for the Philadelphia area, wrote in a recent report.

Ponsen also noted Philadelphia’s industrial vacancy rate, hovering around 5%, remains near 25-year lows. The vacancy rate is even tighter in Bucks County, sitting at about 3.8%, according to CoStar data.

“Any sharp upturn in vacancy looks unlikely for the foreseeable future as distributors continue to realize the strategic advantages of locating in the Philadelphia area: a large blue-collar workforce located squarely between New York and Washington, D.C., right in the middle of the largest cluster of purchasing power in the western hemisphere,” Ponsen wrote.

*Article courtesy of CoStar

For more information about Philly Industrial space for sale or lease in Philadelphia and Philadelphia properties for sale or lease, please contact WCRE at 215-799-6900.

Wolf Commercial Real Estate, a full-service CORFAC International brokerage and advisory firm, is a premier Philadelphia commercial real estate broker that provides a full range of Philadelphia commercial real estate listings and services, property management services, and marketing commercial offices, medical properties, industrial properties, land properties, retail buildings and other Philadelphia commercial properties for buyers, tenants, investors and sellers.

Please visit our websites for a full listing of Philadelphia commercial properties for lease or sale through our Philadelphia commercial real estate brokerage firm.