The Newark City Council recently granted initial approval for a second extension of a tax break it granted to the owner of the FBI building just off McCarter Highway downtown. New York-based real estate firm Claremont Group requested a 10-year extension to a tax break that city officials granted in August 2001 for the building at 1-33 Centre Place.
Members of the city council voted to pass the ordinance on first reading on June 17. Council member Patrick Council was the only official to abstain from the vote, while every other official voted in favor of the legislation.
The ordinance states that Claremont Newark Urban Renewal LLC intends to upgrade the property; however, it does not specify which parts of the property will be upgraded. It also clarifies that the amendment to the financial agreement is ratified from January 2023 until the adoption of the ordinance.
Records from the city council show that the initial financial agreement was adopted by resolution in June 2001. While the text of the legislation is not available online, the first extension to the agreement says the tax break ran until December 2017.
The ordinance authorizing the first extension of the tax break was adopted by the city council in November 2019. That ordinance states that Claremont requested a 15-year extension of the initial agreement, but the legislative body agreed only to a 5-year extension. The council then revised the first extension of the financial agreement in January 2020, clarifying its terms. The revision says Claremont would pay a $1.4 million annual service charge between 2018 and 2022.
An archive from Real Estate Weekly, published in June 2001 and available on TheFreeLibrary.com, reports that officials from the city, the FBI, and Claremont held a ceremonial groundbreaking for the building in May of that year. The report says the Federal Bureau of Investigation would occupy 240,000 square feet of office space in the building and that the property would also include 14,000 square feet of retail space. The Real Estate Weekly report said the building would be the first waterfront development in Brick City along the Passaic River.
A report from May 2001 in the New York Times added that the project had an estimated price tag of $83 million and that it would also include 400 parking spaces alongside the retail space. However, the building is solely occupied by the FBI as of June 2026.
A report in Commercial Observer in June 2021 said that New York-based financial firm CTL Capital agreed to provide an $82.5 million debt facility to Claremont. That facility has a 21.5-year term and is intended to mature in line with a 20-year lease renewal proposed by the U.S. General Services Administration in 2020. The report also said the loan would pay interest at a sub-3% rate and would include six years of interest-only payments.
The council will vote to adopt the second extension to the tax break on July 15.
Claremont Group did not return Jersey Digs’ request for comment.
