An Action Plan for Repurposing Morris Crossroads Corporate Campus:
I want to share the following important ULI report with you. We have all been involved with urban redevelopment projects in the past. For most of us, its been central to our business. However, times have indeed changed. We are now beginning to see more opportunities to play a role in suburban redevelopment plans. Moreover, we are beginning to see where the redevelopment process can play a role in suburban communities. Perhaps no better examples exist than the suburban office park. For that reason, the ULI Technical Assistance Panel (TAP) assembled to evaluate the options for the old BASF HQ in Mount Olive is an important report for all parties concerned. with these . The following TAP is an important read for all of us concerned with turning these “ jurassic office parks” into successful redevelopment projects.
BACKGROUND
Approaching the four-year anniversary of its acquisition, Wells Fargo approached the Urban Land Institute—Northern New Jersey District Council (ULI-NNJ) to convene a Technical Assistance Panel (“TAP”) to evaluate Morris Crossroads Corporate Campus and to formulate innovative recommendations as to how best to reposition it for adaptive reuse given current local market conditions. I was part of the TAP Panel that was convened on March 27 and 28, 2014 to tour the building, meet with community leaders and interested parties, and to develop a strategy to repurpose what was described by one stakeholder as “an isolated monolith, a fortress on the hill.”
The panel was charged with the following scope of work:
• Given current market conditions, is the original intended
use of this property – as a single-user corporate office
headquarters, obsolete?
• If so, is the property suitable for adaptive reuse?
• What are the barriers/obstacles preventing adaptive reuse?
• What can be done to overcome these obstacles and
ultimately make the property more marketable?
Please click on the link below to go to the full report.
