Ask five real estate pros what they would tell Gov. Mikie Sherrill, and you get five versions of the same answer: Speed it up.
That was the takeaway Thursday at Real Estate Rush, an event for women in commercial real estate held at Basking Ridge Country Club.
Moderator Ron Ladell, a longtime developer and chair of the executive committee of the Rutgers Center for Real Estate, asked a panel of brokers, an attorney and a project manager what one thing they would change about real estate in New Jersey.
Approvals came up first, and they kept coming up.
Kim Brennan, Managing Director, brokerage, with Cushman & Wakefield, didn’t need long to think about it.
“Make the approvals quicker,” she said. “Let’s get through the red tape quicker, and, you know, let’s have some economic programs that are not as cumbersome that we can have our clients quickly get to. We want to compete with these other states.”
Jackie Chesler, Vice Chair at Collier, started with keeping the companies the state already has.
“Obviously, corporate retention,” she said.
Chesler said some significant companies have decided to leave New Jersey in the past year and a half — and not all of that falls on the current administration. Other states offer big incentives to lure them, she said.
Then she got to the approvals. With more than 500 municipalities making decisions on real estate, she said, the process is cumbersome — and slow.
Chesler sold The District at 15fifteen. She said it took the developer seven or eight years to break ground.
“That shouldn’t happen,” she said.
And it’s not a one-off.
“I hear this over and over, sometimes upwards of 10 years to get breaking ground,” she said. “That’s problematic, especially when you have a lot of office product that needs to come offline.”
Mindy Lissner, Vice Chair at Cushman & Wakefield, works in industrial real estate. She said New Jersey sells itself to distribution companies: the port, the roads and the labor.
The problem is price.
Lissner is working with a New Jersey company whose lease is up for renewal. Rents have tripled since it signed. It’s looking at $16 a square foot here — or $7 in Norfolk, Va., which also has a port, though not as good a one, and roads that aren’t as good either.
On 400,000 square feet, that $7 gap works out to about $3 million a year and $30 million over 10 years, she said.
Companies that need to be here are still coming, she said. But some are moving out. Her fix: Bring back bigger incentives.
“I think we need to reinstate some incentives because that is a big question we get asked by clients,” she said. “What kind of incentives is New Jersey offering?”
Aileen Brennan, a development and land use attorney with Murphy Schiller & Wilkes, said big projects need a different track than a two-family house.
Right now, she said, a developer might need DEP approvals, then DOT approvals, then local approvals — and federal approvals if the site is on a waterway. Nobody is coordinating.
“There should be some central location that’s in charge of helping to get all of those approvals together,” she said.
Brennan said the cost of approvals needs to come down, too. Otherwise, a project that works on paper may never get built.
“Maybe just getting that shovel in the ground is going to be so expensive that it’s not worth their time or their money,” she said.
Mildred Tolentino, owner of project management firm M To-Pros, brought the view of a small business owner. She works on both sides of the Hudson, and she said New York does more for minority- and women-owned businesses.
“I feel that New York has a lot of incentive for the MWBE community, and I don’t see that so much in New Jersey,” she said. “And I think that small business is what propels the economy.”
One panelist offered a different kind of answer.
Caroline Ehrlich, the chief of staff to Woodbridge Township Mayor John McCormac, said the town wants to be known as the place developers want to be. When a broker calls asking whether a project can work, she said, the town gives an answer fast.
“We’ll give you a yes,” she said. “Sometimes we’ll give you a no, but at least you’ll get the no quickly.”
Ladell, a developer and attorney with 40 years in the business, said that kind of talk is rare in a home rule state — and why Woodbridge is always on tip of folks lips when asked the best town to do business in.
“Isn’t it great to attend an event where a municipal representative says what she just said?” he said.
Then again, a quick yes or a quick no is just what everyone else on the panel was asking for.
