JV Buys New Jersey Office Portfolio for $158M

8 Campus Drive. Image courtesy of Onyx Equities

A partnership between four companies has acquired a 10-building office portfolio in Morris County, N.J. for $158 million. JLL facilitated the transaction for the buyer, a joint venture between Onyx Equities, Taconic Capital Advisors, Axonic Capital and Machine Investment Group, and the seller, Mack-Cali. 

The portfolio totals 1.5 million square feet and is divided between nine buildings in Parsippany and another in Madison. John Saraceno Jr., Onyx’s managing principal, told Commercial Property Executive that the portfolio was 84 percent leased with roughly 100 tenants across the properties. Yardi Matrix shows the Parsippany properties are located at 1, 3, 5 and 7 Sylvan Way, 4, 6 and 8 Campus Way, 2 Hilton Court and 2 Dryden Way. The Madison asset is at 1 Giralda Farms.

The well-located suburban portfolio benefits from office migration out of New York City, Saraceno told CPE. He noted the company plans to implement capital improvements but declined to reveal specifics. The renovations would be done to attract tenants from within the suburban market but also with an eye to capturing potential relocations out of New York.

7 Sylvan Way. Image courtesy of Onyx Equities

Onyx is well acquainted with New Jersey’s suburban office market, following an $61.9 million, 850,000-square-foot acquisition from Mack-Cali in late 2017. Yardi Matrix shows Onyx had divested from each of the portfolio’s four buildings by September 2019. The firm also partnered with Taconic, Axonic and Garrison Investment Group to buy a 1.6 million-square-foot Newark office campus in Newark in early 2019.

Bullish on bigger picture

As the sector looks to recover from the ongoing impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures, some office assets have begun reopening at reduced capacity while others have delayed returning to the office. Even despite the pandemic’s major office impacts, Saraceno emphasized that the bigger, long-term picture for an office building’s success relies on its quality and location.

“Whenever there is some type of negative impact inside the state or inside real estate, there’s a flight to quality,” Saraceno told CPE. “There may be inferior assets in Parsippany that will be in trouble, but (once our nine buildings are) done with the improvements, they’ll be best in class.”