Corrections or additions?
This article was prepared for the April 17, 2002 edition of
U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Between the Lines
Twice yearly, when we track commercial space available,
we try to provide a window onto the world of commercial real estate,
with all its jargon: net rent, gross rent, shell, relet, sublet, and
workletters. For business owners and would-be entrepreneurs, the
listings
are a way of judging whether the grass is really greener in the
adjoining
office park. How much are those people paying and what are they
getting
for it?
For the rest of us, there is a certain voyeuristic satisfaction in
seeing what’s out there. After all, some of us spend more waking hours
at our office than at our home.
Turn to page 11 to see for yourself what’s out there. About those
terms: Gross rent usually means everything is included except your
own utilities. Net rent means you pay the extras — taxes,
maintenance,
etc. Shell space has never been occupied. Example: Alexander Commons
at 693 Alexander, across from the Hyatt. Relet space means a company
moved out at the end of the lease, and if you are moving in you can
get a workletter, a landlord’s promise to refit the space for your
needs. Sublet space means a company downsized or moved out with time
remaining on the lease. Example: all the buildings on our cover. This
year that’s our story.
The relatively large number of available space listings in this issue
(compared to real estate sections printed during boom times) took
up the lion’s share of our editorial space. As we were going to press
several news stories broke that will get treatment in future issues:
Bharat Modi, 56, was found shot to death in his officein Suite E-10 at 29 Emmons Drive. His company, Super B Telecom Inc.,had moved there in October, 2001, and his business card read”domesticand international service provider for prepaid calling cards.”He was last seen alive by one of his associates on Saturday, April13, at 9 p.m. He was found with two gunshot wounds in the head.The American Boychoir, the home of the gifted choirs thathave often been chronicled in our Preview section, became the latestinstitution (after the Catholic Church) to be accused of accommodatingchild sex abusers on its staff. The allegations were detailed in alengthy article in the New York Times this Tuesday, April 16. Theallegations involve incidents from the 1960s through the early 1980sand the Boychoir, we suspect, will have some response with respectto what it is doing now to protect its students.Finally, we received a phone call from a former owner of theold hotel in Trenton, regarding last week’s cover story on the newMarriott Hotel and Conference Center. Our article had said that onereason that the old hotel had failed was that — in comparisonto the new Marriott — it was not a conference center but ratherwas “all rooms.”The former owner, Ned Tatler, said the old hotel had conference rooms,plus a swimming pool, a lounge, a cafe, and even a revolvingrestauranton the 16th floor. But “we got absolutely no support from thecity,” says Tatler.Just how the new hotel varies from the old will be the subject ofadditional reporting. One thing is for sure, as our article stated:This time around the hotel is getting total support from the city.Corrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
