New Jersey office landlord Mack-Cali Realty, is partnering with Hoboken-based Ironstate Development to develop two luxury towers with 500 rental units on the Jersey City waterfront, the Wall Street Journal reported, in an effort to diversify it’s predominantly commercial office portfolio as the market shifts towards residential.

“What they’re doing, I think it’s very smart. At the moment, the market clearly shows more demand for residential than for office,” said Jamie LeFrak, a principal at the LeFrak Organization, a major developer in Jersey City.

The towers will span two city blocks the Journal said, currently the site of vacant parking lots. Mack-Cali is aiming to break ground on the development in the last quarter of 2012. [more]

From left: 7 Sylvan Way and 22 Sylvan Way

Mack-Cali Realty said it will build a new 203,000-square-foot office building for Wyndham Worldwide,
a move that will allow the hotel chain to consolidate its Parsippany, N.J.-based headquarters into one
corporate complex.

Wyndham currently operates from its 250,000-square-foot corporate headquarters at 22 Sylvan Way in
Parsippany and a separate 146,000-square-foot building at 7 Sylvan Way. Wyndham will move all of the roughly about 700
employees out of the latter building and into the new tower, which is set to debut adjacent to 22 Sylvan
Way by late 2013.

“It was always a planned approach to have the two buildings next to each other,” Wyndham spokesperson
Michael Valentino told The Real Deal. [more]

If you think that the commercial leasing velocity has slowed down in
Manhattan, all you have to do is look across the Hudson River to New
Jersey and see an office leasing market that has been on life support
for the past few years. According to a recent report issued by CB Richard Ellis on the New
Jersey office market, leasing velocity continued to decline in the
first quarter of this year, asking rents slipped and availability rates
increased from last quarter, closing at 20.43 percent, the first time
the market has hit 20 percent since 2004. In a conference call with analysts, Mack-Cali Realty, one of the
largest owners of office space in New Jersey, noted that rents rolled
down during the quarter by about 6.1 percent compared to the fourth
quarter of 2008. In its core markets, North and Central New Jersey, the
company had roll downs of 6.4 percent and 7.5 percent respectively. [more]