The next meeting of the Together North Jersey Forum and Task Forces will take place on January 17, 2018 in conjunction with a TNJ Institute workshop on Repurposing to Support Economic Development. The workshop will be held as a plenary session during the Forum meeting, followed by individual Task Force breakout meeting.
The plenary session is the first in a series of workshops Together North Jersey is sponsoring to explore strategies for identifying uses for properties that no longer can be used for their original purposes. This first workshop will investigate the overall trends in northern New Jersey’s real estate market that create the vacancies and the need for creative repurposing of the properties.
The series will consider the reuse of land and buildings that were once economically productive, but now, with a changing economy, have characteristics that prevent their easy reuse. For instance, land that was once a busy factory that is now vacant, and contaminated from its former use as a factory. Other difficult properties include large suburban corporate parks that struggle to find large tenants to occupy the entire site, large shopping malls and smaller highway retail spaces with increasing vacancies and difficulty finding tenants as the demand for retail space softens, and older industrial building that sit empty since manufacturing activity has largely left the region, leaving demand for manufacturing space weak.
Immediately following the plenary session, the Together North Jersey Task Forces will meet in breakout session to discuss their ongoing activities and planning for 2018. Individual agendas for those breakout sessions will be available in the coming weeks.
Tentative Agenda:
12:30 to 1:00 – Registration
1:00 – to 1:10 – Welcome – Zenobia Fields, NJTPA
1:15 to 2:15 – Plenary Session on Repurposing Propoerty to Support Economic Development
- Co-Moderators – Michael McGuiness, NAIOPNJ & Michael Kerwin, Somerset County Business Partnership
- Repurposing Corporate Office Parks – Peter Cocoziello, Advance Realty
- Repurposing Brownfields – Ben Delilse, Jersey City Redevelopment Agency
- Repurposing Suburban Shopping Malls and Highway Strip Centers – Jared Rodriguez, Lefrak Organization
- Repurposing Large Industrial Buildings – Michael Myer, Kearny Point
2:15 to 2:30 Break
2:30 to 4:00 – BREAKOUTS: TNJ Task Force meetings (Competitive, Effiicent, Livable, Resilient)
Agenda’s for task force meetings: