Investment Advisor Pleads Guilty
Matrix Builds For Mercedes Benz
Equity for Doctors: Works for M. Gordon
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Barbara Fox were prepared for the July 23, 2003
issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Life in the Fast Lane: Safe Corridors
If you get a speeding ticket or change lanes without
signaling while you drive past the Carnegie Center, it will cost you
more than if you are driving by the Sarnoff Corporation. That’s
because
10 miles of Route 1 — from where you cross the bridge in Trenton
to Carnegie Center Boulevard — have been declared a “Safe
Corridor,” and some traffic fines will double here.
A just-signed law authorizes Jack Lettiere, transportation
commissioner,
to designate “Safe Corridors” based upon accident rates,
fatalities,
traffic volume, and other highway traffic safety criteria. Half of
the fines collected will go to a new Highway Safety Fund to be used
for education, enforcement, capital improvements, and similar projects
that could improve highway safety. The law is part of a state
initiative
to reduce the record of 700 traffic-caused deaths in New Jersey last
year.
Twelve other Safe Corridors have been created, including the stretch
of Route 1 beginning at milepost 20 (just north of Henderson Road
and south of Black Horse Lane) and continuing to milepost 30 in
Edison.
The governor’s office also reports that $3 million is earmarked for
short-term improvements for a different 10-mile stretch of Route 1,
the stretch between Franklin Corner and Ridge roads. The improvements
include upgrades to traffic signals, installation of new, larger
signs,
new pedestrian crosswalks, and enhanced pavement markings.
These improvements were recommended by a Safety Impact team, convened
two months ago, that a press release says is “a
first-in-the-nation
collaborative effort” between the NJDOT, NJTransit, the Federal
Highway Administration, state and local law enforcement, the Federal
Motor Carrier Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration.
More than 677,000 vehicles traveled the Franklin Corner/Ridge Road
section of Route 1 in 2002, and nearly 1,400 accidents occurred there
in the last two years, according to the DOT. Yet not all of this
stretch
was included in the Safe Corridor assignment.
Safe Corridor assignments, parceled out in 10-mile modules, are
sometimes
contiguous, but the DOT chose to omit the 10-mile stretch between
the Carnegie Center and the northern part of South Brunswick. Kristin
Appelget, president of West Windsor Council, and Charles Morgan, West
Windsor councilman, are pushing to have the rest of this stretch added
to the Safe Corridor legislation.
The reason for omitting the 10 mile stretch of Route 1 in West
Windsor,
Plainsboro, and South Brunswick? “The Safety Impact team went
out prior to the decision on the corridor, two months ago, before
the passage of the legislation,” says Anna Farneski, DOT
spokesperson.
“We didn’t want to wait for the Safe Corridors to be decided.”
She says the DOT decided that the smaller section, from Trenton to
Carnegie Center, was deemed to be the most dangerous section. “It
was based on scientific evidence. Our review was comprehensive, and
we spent much time doing it.”
The DOT points to other steps it has taken to improve highway safety:
actively promoting the #77 Aggressive Driver hotline statewide;
expediting
the installation of 100 miles of safety barriers; allocating $20
million
for engineering and technological highway improvements; adding 500
miles of raised pavement reflectors over the next two years; recording
public safety announcements; and expanding driver education programs.
Top Of PageInvestment Advisor Pleads Guilty
Former investment advisor Alexis Arlett, 44, pleaded
guilty last week to wire fraud and tax evasion. Arlett had conducted
her business, Arlett & Associates Inc., from her Montgomery home.
She has been charged with embezzling $3.3 million from her clients’
accounts and evading more than $922,000 in federal income taxes.
Last week, in the court of U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson,
Arlett
admitted to overcharging her clients and doctoring their account
statements
to conceal the fraud. She reportedly spent $1.3 million of the
embezzled
funds on jewelry and the rest went for art and clothes.
Arlett is free on $25,000 bond, says her attorney, Jeremy Frey of
Pepper Hamilton’s Cherry Hill office. She could face up to five years
in prison and maximum penalties of $350,000. She and her husband,
Michael Kochmann, have one child.
Arlett’s sentencing is scheduled for October 21, and though she could
be ordered to pay back the stolen investor funds and the unpaid income
taxes, it has yet to be seen whether the money can be collected.
Arlett’s
assets were frozen two years ago by the SEC. Just $500,000 has been
recovered so far from her estate, according to Theodore Liscinski,
a bankruptcy trustee in charge of Arlett’s involuntary personal
bankruptcy
case.
How Arlett’s scheme worked: she inflated her fees and, when clients
questioned their statements, she claimed there were accounting errors
and provided altered monthly statements. Sometimes she covered her
errors by inflating the value of her clients’ holdings.
The clients of Arlett & Associates were supposed to pay annual
advisory
fees: 1.5 percent of assets under management up to $200,000; 1 percent
of assets under management between $200,000 and $1 million; and .75
percent of assets under management of more than $1 million. Arlett
admitted that the amount she embezzled from 1995 to 2000 was more
than half of the entire value of all her company’s investment accounts
at the height of their collective value.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Christie of the U.S. Attorney’s
Commercial
Crimes Unit in Newark represented the federal government.
Top Of PageName Changes: Buschman
Now that Insignia/ESG is joining CB Richard Ellis,
Buschman
Partners will once more be an independent corporate real estate
services
firm. For three years the Buschman organization was Insignia/ESG’s
representative in the Greater Princeton/Mercer County area.
“I have the utmost respect and admiration for Insignia/ESG. Our
parting has ended on only the most positive terms,” says Buschman,
who has had his business in Princeton since 1985. Working with Steve
Tolcash, Tom Romano, and former Yardley golf pro Jim Murray, he
intends
to remain a niche broker catering to the needs of a defined market:
“We had a good time, and they are good people, but there were
a lot of people to put together in this thing. It wasn’t right for
them and it wasn’t right for us.”
CB Richard Ellis and Insignia/ESG are scheduled to release the details
on the merger and the new name of the merged company on Wednesday,
July 23.
Buschman Partners, 1009 Lenox Drive, Building 4,Suite 116, Lawrenceville 08648. John H. Buschman, executive managingdirector. 609-896-1600; fax, 609-896-1753.Top Of PageMatrix Builds For Mercedes BenzMatrix Development is developing a 650,000 square footregional parts-distribution facility near Exit 7A for automanufacturerDaimlerChrysler’s Mercedes Benz division. To be completed by nextyear, it will be the first major building at Matrix Business Centerat 7A. KSS Architects of Witherspoon Street is doing the high-techfuturistic design.The Mercedes Benz facility will be the second auto parts distributioncenter that Matrix has developed, and the third one that KSS designed.Matrix and Volkswagen commissioned KSS to design Volkswagen’s firstwarehouse at Exit 8A in 1997. The 223,000-foot building became knownfor its walls of glass. It is on the market now, marketed by TrammellCrow, because Volkswagen has tripled its space with a move to a928,000-footStation Road facility, also designed by KSS and developed by CabotIndustrial Properties.Purpose-built warehouses with very high ceilings are what the Fortune500 companies want right now. “The norm for warehouse distributioncenters in Central Jersey was recently 32 foot clear and today itis 36 foot clear,” says Jim Murray, vice president of developmentat Matrix. “As companies retool their logistics they ask for anincreasing number of dock doors and trailer parking spaces.”Matrix has filled one of its tracts at Exit 7A (Northeast BusinessPark) and Mercedes Benz represents the first project in MatrixBusinessCenter. The tracts are contiguous. They both use Exit 7 from the NewJersey Turnpike but each has its own exit from I-195. The MercedesBenz Park will use Interchange 8 off of I-195, while NortheastBusinessPark has Interchange 7 off of I-195.Of the 10 buildings totaling 3 million square feet at NortheastBusinessPark, two are under construction. The buildings include 1 millionsquare feet fronting the turnpike for Seaman’s Furniture, an almostfinished 435,000 foot warehouse for W.W. Grainger, 552,000 feet forLifetime Hoan (kitchen cutlery ), 120,000 feet for Bohren’s Moving& Storage, and 150,000 for the Jack Morton Group, a display company.Under construction is 135,000 square feet for Sleepy’s Mattress.Since its founding in 1979, Matrix Development has developed realestate valued in excess of $1 billion. In March the firm beganconstructinga 230,000-foot warehouse at 5 Fitzgerald Avenue in CenterPoint at8A Industrial Park. Designed by Venezia & Associates of New Brunswick,it is easily divisible for multiple tenants but Murray says he hopesto announce a deal for 150,000 square feet soon.Some of the vacant older buildings at Exit 8A are filling up, saysMurray. “Ten years ago the standard was 26 and 28 foot clear andthose buildings are a large chunk of the 8A vacancy. But thosebuildingsare being filled by companies moving down from further north wherethe ceilings were even lower.”Matrix Development Group, CN 4000, Cranbury 08512.Joseph S. Taylor, president and chief executive officer. 732-521-2900;fax, 609-395-8289. Home page: www.matrixcompanies.comTop Of PageEquity for Doctors: Works for M. GordonIt’s the renter’s dilemma: Whether to bleed money intothe landlord’s pocket or whether to build or buy an office. Rentersdon’t need capital, can move when they want, and don’t have to takecare of the property — and it costs time and trouble to developa building. Buying a condo is one solution, and M. Gordon constructioncompany has another that it is pitching to doctors.Linden-based M. Gordon Construction is offering equity to its majortenant, Windsor Radiology, a partnership of Princeton RadiologyAssociatesand Radiology Affiliates Imaging. It is scheduled to occupy 14,000square feet (most of the first floor) of an $8 million 40,000 foottwo-story building at Route 571 at Old Trenton Road in East Windsor.Two similar buildings have also been approved for the $25 millionproject. Buckman Architectural Group in Kenilworth is the designer,and Dave Saltzman, of Newmark Real Estate of New Jersey, is marketingthe project.M. Gordon has built 10 medical buildings around the state, is in theprocess of constructing 6 buildings, and has 18 medical projects underdevelopment, says Norman Silbert, business development manager. TheWindsor Radiology building broke ground on July 10.It’s unusual to develop medical buildings that offer equity, but it’sa good idea, says realtor Saltzman, because medical practices rarelymove — they stay in one place for an average of 27 years. That’swhy this construction company employs this unusual model. It allowsdoctors to get equity in their office without subjecting them to thehassles of development, construction, and maintenance. Other practicescan choose to lease or buy space in this building. M. Gordon handlesall the construction, fitout, and even the maintenance after thebuildingis completed.Physicians like owning their own offices, says Saltzman. “It isgood diversity for their income, but they don’t have the time to gothrough the process of building them. Condominiums give you greaterrisk because you are responsible for your space if you don’t use itany more. With M. Gordon managing the project, including futuremaintenance,it is vertically integrated. This building is not just a return oninvestment. It is a hands-free — but touch and feelinvestment.””Our project started with the need of a future tenant, and theyhave speculated a venture for additional space. Every building theGordons have ever built is fully leased before the building iscomplete,”says Saltzman.Saltzman cites the demographics: this building is equidistant fromthree hospitals (Princeton, Hamilton, and Freehold) and can draw fromfive towns experiencing growth rates of up to 37 percent. He’s alsohappy about working with East Windsor. “In my 20 years ofdevelopmentexperience,” says Saltzman, “East Windsor has been as goodas any town in assisting in the application process.”Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
