The U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s largest publicly-traded real estate company has just purchased a majority stake in one of Hoboken’s most modern office buildings, proving that the age-old wisdom of “location, location, location” hasn’t changed much.
Mitsui Fudosan America, the New York outpost of Japan’s Mitsui Fudosan Co. Ltd., are the new majority owners of Waterfront Corporate Center III at 221 River Street. The thirteen-story office building was completed in 2015 by Manhattan-based SJP Properties and fully leased its 511,637 square feet of Class A office space just 14 months after opening, drawing tenants like Pearson Publishing, Jet.com, Newell Brans, and NICE Systems to the Mile Square City.
“We are excited to expand our footprint along the Hudson River into New Jersey,” said John Westerfield, CEO of MFA. “Waterfront Corporate Center III is New Jersey’s highest-quality and most recently developed office building, and we look forward to joining and enhancing the already thriving community that exists there.”
While the company did not disclose terms of the sale, their praise of the property is well deserved. Waterfront Corporate Center III is LEED Gold Certified and also sports 24,694 square-feet of retail space on the ground floor. It has been filled by Del Frisco’s Grille, a Montessori School, Investors Bank and the currently under construction Greek From Greece.
Waterfront Corporate Center III was the last phase of Hoboken’s South Waterfront Redevelopment Plan, a 26‐acre project that saw post-industrial piers transformed into a mixed-use community. The finished product has been a great success and has brought several companies to Hoboken. Earlier this year, accounting firm Ernst & Young agreed to lease 168,000 square-feet of office space in Waterfront Corporate Center II just down the street from MFA’s latest purchase.
The company has some major projects in the pipeline locally. Last year, MFA announced it would invest in the partnership that will build 55 Hudson Yards in Manhattan, a 51-story tower featuring 1.4 million square-feet of office space. While they haven’t announced any developments on the other side of the river yet, their entry into the New Jersey marketplace is now official.
