From the Record:
Commercial developers offer grim outlook
New Jersey’s commercial real estate community believes the state is an unfriendly place for business, to the point that companies are going to Pennsylvania rather than pay the proposed toll-road increases and fight congested roads here.
That was the sentiment expressed Tuesday by commercial real estate executives at a symposium at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick hosted by the New Jersey chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties. The attendees painted a gloomy picture of how companies view doing business in New Jersey.
They spoke of how Governor Corzine’s proposed toll hikes are keeping businesses from relocating or expanding into New Jersey, how some infrastructure problems have gone unfixed for as long as a decade and how a maze of environmental restrictions has agencies such as the Department of Environmental Protection thwarting brownfield and urban development.
Curtis Oltmans, assistant general counsel of the global pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, spoke of how the company recently opted to keep its North American headquarters in Princeton. The decision wasn’t easy. Most of the Princeton employees commute from Pennsylvania, and the Route 1 corridor has become increasingly congested, to the point that Novo Nordisk is finding it difficult to recruit “key people we want to attract” because of commuting obstacles, Oltmans said.
“And the problem is getting worse. Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said.
Upgrading New Jersey’s infrastructure is not going to be an easy task, said Kris Kolluri, commissioner of the state Department of Transportation. With the state’s Transportation Trust Fund set to run out in 2011, Kolluri said New Jersey needs to resolve its debt problems as quickly as possible before the DOT runs out of money to fund improvement projects.
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Still, the vacancy rate of New Jersey’s office market remains near 20 percent, and rents in most submarkets for Class A space have not risen past $30 per square foot. Despite a historic disparity between rents and vacancy rates in New Jersey and Manhattan, very few companies have opted to cross the Hudson River as a savings move.
So congestion pricing is already reducing traffic? Sweet. I guess we should have known that those people driving around in cars aren’t doing it for their health. They are actually doing it to go to work.
Novo just probably wants a tax break or something. Rte 1 has actually improved a lot from the Scudders Fall Bridge to Princeton/Plainsboro since they took out a few lights.
Pennsylvania is better for traffic! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Ever drive on the Schuykill during rush hour? It will take you hours and hours and hours.
They are missing some major highways outside of Philly. You got 76, and the Blue Route. They call roads “highways,” that’s how few real highways they have out there.
Take a look at PA’s Route One versus NJs and tell me who invested more in it and which one you would like your company located on Mr. Oltmans.
This is an issue and a big problem with Corzines toll plan, the big fight between the eastern ports is happening if we are going to keep the Newark-Elizabeth sea port as the largest on the eastern seaboard we need to leverage the extensive rail and road network in the area as well as the turnpike corridor distribution facilities. Economically the port is very important to NJ it brings in money, creates jobs, etc. They are overplaying it because NJ does have tremendous advantages because of it’s transportation network and proximity to strong consumer markets, but there is a tipping point where moving makes sense, expensive oil has been helping this state by reducing the benefit of moving to cheaper port facilities.
Office space in NJ has been a big joke it is too expensive and offers too few benefits to be occupied fully. Short of the Hudson waterfront Manhattan companies are highly unlikely to relocate employees out of NYC to deep in the NJ suburbs.
The big enemy is the DEP, they move too slowly for most companies doing Brownfield development, a 3 year start to finish time line is too long for the end user to wait for their building especially when the DEP is taking 1/3rd of the total time to review the forms and site. The problem is the government of NJ thinks the same way crazy home sellers do, “we have proximity to NYC and therefore they will pay any price to be here” and it simply isn’t true .
#2. Very true. I never take the “surekill expressway” unless it is off-hour. Phila. is missing highways because it went into urban funk during the 70s so no new highways got planned. Then, when Philly’s economy improved, no infrastructure. And, unlike Boston or NYC, they don’t have the secondary routes, so city streets become thruways.
Contrast NJ, which has highway access everywhere but no reason to be there.