Suburban municipalities with vibrant downtowns, offering a lively restaurant scene and attractive housing, are now vying with cities for corporate office tenants. And developers SJP Properties and Scotto Properties have demonstrated exactly how to compete in that game with M Station East, their office project in Morristown, New Jersey.
Their development has given Morristown an economic shot in the arm by helping to attract three large companies — including Fortune 500 firm Deloitte — to the city, which dates back to the Revolutionary War. The new employees working in Morristown will be patronizing and supporting local businesses as well. It all adds up to a big boost for Morristown, which is why M Station East has earned a 2023 CoStar Impact Award for commercial development in Northern New Jersey, as judged by real estate professionals familiar with the market
SJP, in partnership with Scotto, last summer completed M Station East, the first of two buildings that represent the most significant commercial development planned for Morristown in almost 40 years. They were looking to provide headquarters-quality, Class A office buildings in a thriving, transit-oriented suburb.
SJP and Scotto secured Deloitte as a tenant for all of M Station East in 2019. Deloitte began occupying its new space in July of last year, bringing about 1,495 employees with it. Since then, Valley Bank said it will be relocating its headquarters to another project that SJP and Scotto are building in Morristown, and pharmaceutical firm Sanofi will be leasing the second phase of M Station, its western building.
About the project: M Station East at 110 Morris St. is six stories tall and totals roughly 120,000 square feet, including 10,000 square feet of retail space. M Station West, the second phase, will be seven stories tall and 260,000 square feet in area. The office complex replaced an outdated strip center and surface parking lot, and its developers made efforts to help relocate the retail tenants who were displaced by the development.
What the judges said: M Station is a transformative redevelopment that embodies the live-work-play trend of offices being constructed in or near residential areas so people can live and work in the same neighborhood, a judge said.
They made it happen: SJP’s team included CEO Steve Pozycki, Chief Financial Officer David Welch, Chief Operating Officer Andrew Natale, Senior Vice President of Construction Chris Pastore and Senior Vice President of Leasing and Marketing Alex Erdos.