855 Valley Road, Clifton NJ

63,000 Square Foot Office Building – Sale Price of $12,500,000

The Challenge

In January 2022, Darren Lizzack and Randy Horning were hired by a private investor to identify a building to purchase in Clifton, NJ that was a minimum of 20,000 sq. ft.  Unfortunately, there were no available buildings on the open market for sale at the time that would satisfy this requirement.  The Client insisted that the Team work harder to find a suitable building for their operations.

Action

Darren and Randy decided to reverse engineer the requirement, and we ran a search in Clifton for buildings that had 20,000 sq. ft. available.  There was only one building, the subject property, that had enough space to accommodate the client’s needs.  The Team tracked down the owner of the property who was adamant about not selling.  Darren and Randy used their expertise to convince the owner to consider selling to our client.  After a few rounds of negotiations, the gap kept closing in until a meeting of the minds was met.

The building was quickly put under contract and due diligence commenced.  At the tail end of due diligence, the Phase I environmental report uncovered a potential environmental problem given the property had been used as a gas station over 80 years ago.  The deal seemed to be falling apart because the attorneys could not come up with a solution that each party would agree to.

Result

Darren and Randy thought to contact an environmental attorney from CREA United to see if he had any ideas that would make each party comfortable moving forward.  The seller retained the environmental consultant to work with his attorney to draft language that would allow the deal to proceed.  A Phase II study was performed and it was concluded that there was no evidence of any environmental concerns, and so the parties prepared for closing and the transaction concluded.

Project Team

Press Release

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