The 334-unit luxury apartment complex at the center of the historic Thomas Edison Invention Factory and Commerce Center in West Orange was recently sold by Nutley-based real estate firm Prism Capital Partners. The firm sold the mixed-use complex at 33 Ashland Avenue for $131 million eight years after completing the project.
The apartment complex includes two buildings: the restored Thomas Edison Battery Building, a 34-unit new building known as The Mews at Edison Lofts, and nearly 19,000 square feet of retail space.
The residential portion of the property consists of studios and one- and two-bedroom lofts with 14- to 16-foot ceilings, oversized windows, stainless steel appliances, quartz countertops, and custom cabinetry, to name a few. Rents at the apartment complex start at $2,200 per month.
The property was 95% occupied at the time of the sale and features 32,000 square feet of amenities, including a fitness center, indoor pool, resident lounges and outdoor community spaces.
A report in Patch West Orange says real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield orchestrated the transaction between Prism Capital and Sym Investments.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Niko Nicolaou, Ryan Dowd, J.P. Hohl, Michael Guerra, Kelley Kellett and Alexandria Russo Ebers represented the seller and procured the buyer, according to a report in REBusiness Online.
Cushman & Wakefield’s John Alascio, Brad Domenico and Chuck Kohaut also arranged a $91.7 million acquisition loan from New York Life.
Documents made public by the Township of West Orange state that the battery building was part of a 1 million-square-foot laboratory and industrial complex built by Thomas Edison between 1906 and 1914. The original plan for the redevelopment also included a parking structure for over 600 cars, but it is unclear if the parking deck was part of the transaction.
The building was made entirely of reinforced Portland cement and steel and featured 14- and 16-foot ceilings with more than 750 window openings. Repositioning the battery building was the first phase of the former industrial park’s redevelopment.
The township designated Prism as the redeveloper of the site in 2006, nearly 12 years before the apartment complex officially opened, as reported by Jersey Digs in May 2018.
Sym Investments has made similar acquisitions in recent months. The firm acquired the 232-unit apartment building at 155 and 165 Belmont Avenue in Belleville in January for $80 million. That complex was completed in 2022 and sold four years later by Baltimore, Maryland-based Klein Enterprises. It had an average rent of $2,427 a month in 2025, according to a report in Multi-Housing News.
