RGDC starts work on 680,000 s/f warehouse.

Rockefeller Group Development Corporation and IDI have begun site work on a 55-acre parcel of land acquired from Church & Dwight Co., Inc. on Half Acre Road in Cranbury, N.J.

The activity is the result of a complex series of transactions orchestrated by Cushman & Wakefield's Stan Danzig and Jules Nissim, who negotiated the sale of the parcel to the joint venture of RGDC and IDI.

The property is part of a 115-acre campus that Church & Dwight inherited when it acquired Carter Wallace's consumer products division in 2001. RGDC is developing a speculative 680,000 s/f, class A warehouse/distribution building with Foreign Trade Zone status on the site. The project will feature cross docking and 36-foot clear ceilings. It will be ready for delivery by the third quarter of 2006, according to Clark Machemer, RGDC's director of real estate development.

The RGDC project ushers in a new chapter for the 8A submarket.

"Many people still think of Exit 8A as a land of opportunity for ground-up development," Danzig said. "However, very little raw land is left that is not already developed or controlled. That's why the sale to RGDC was crucial to give the company the opportunity to remain an active player in the market."

"This campus in its heyday was a major force in the pharmaceutical and consumer products industry. It was one of the first major industrial developments in the Exit 8A market. However, in this decade, its use was outdated but the location remained a prime site, which became an eyesore for Cranbury. With RGDC moving ahead, it soon will regain its former significance, this time as modern, state-of-the-art distribution space."

Danzig and Nissim initially began work on behalf of Church & Dwight at its 8A campus in 2000, in an assignment to dispose of the company's surplus real estate. The property contained 750,000 s/f in four structures--a lab, an office/ manufacturing building, a warehouse and research building and a pad site for another 140,000 s/f. Ultimately, however, it was decided that the buildings and equipment were too outdated and rehabilitation costs would be prohibitive.

In response, the Cushman & Wakefield team started a bidding process for developers. RGDC won the project in 2002 with a master plan to raze the existing buildings and develop just under two million square feet of class A warehouse/distribution space and a small retail building. The firm went into contract and obtained site plan approval. However, environmental concerns surfaced, which threatened the progress. As a solution, Cushman & Wakefield proposed site bifurcation into four subdivisions to permit demolition of the lab and office/manufacturing buildings without impacting the area of the site that lacked NFA approval. This enabled RGDC to purchase those parcels that did have NFA letters and create a site plan which was approved by Cranbury.

At the same time, Church & Dwight retained ownership of the area with identified groundwater issues. The property included a research building, where Church & Dwight decided to maintain operations. Last fall, Cushman & Wakefield also found another buyer for the warehouse and pad site.