Commercial Real Estate Transaction
Horizon NJ Health, 210 Silvia Street, West Trenton 08628; 609-718-9001; fax, 609-538-0997. Karen Clark, president and COO. Home page: www.horizonnjhealth.com.
Horizon NJ Health has extended its seven-year stay in West Trenton for at least another decade.
The organization has signed a long-term lease extension for its 59,000 square foot, two-story office headquarters at 210 Silvia Street.
The offices are in a building inHilton Realty-owned Ewing Commerce Park.
Representing Horizon was Steve Tolkach, managing principal of Newmark Knight Frank’s Princeton office, while Mark Hill served as Hilton’s in-house leasing representative.
The value of the lease was not disclosed, but sources place the property’s total value at around $15 million.
“The current market climate brought about a fortunate opportunity for Horizon NJ Health to negotiate favorable terms for a long-term extension of its lease,” Tolkach says. “Like many deals in today’s market, we were able to restructure terms for the long haul and also gain an immediate rental savings and other important incentives for our client.”
One of these incentives, according to Tolkach, is the building’s location in Ewing Commerce Park, a multi-building, 350,000-square-foot-plus office and flex park situated along Interstate 95 and minutes from Trenton.
“Being near the state capital is essential for Horizon NJ Health, which serves publicly insured individuals in the Medicaid and NJ FamilyCare programs,” he says.
“The most important point is that we were able to find a class A building, with rents that we feel are undermarket, which also allows for easy access to Trenton.”
New in Town
Nucryst Pharmaceuticals Corp., 101 College Road East, Princeton 08540; Home page: www.nucryst.com.
Nucryst Pharmaceuticals Corp., a struggling developer and manufacturer of medical products that fight infection and inflammation, is leaving its current headquarters, in Wakefield, Massachusetts, and relocating to College Road East by the end of the year, according to filings the company has made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company’s stock has slipped below $1 a share, the minimum required for listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Nucryst, which has 133 employees, has informed the SEC that it has paid a $220,000 lease termination fee to its landlord, and has stated that it plans to move operations to the Princeton area. Calls to the company to confirm its plans were not immediately returned.
The company has a number of patents based on its nanocrystalline silver technology and has had success in developing and manufacturing wound dressings for Smith & Nephew, the world’s largest would care company. These dressings are used by hospitals, clinics, burn centers, and nursing homes to combat infection in a variety of wounds, including life-threatening burns and chronic wounds.
Reorganization
Datacolor Inc., 5 Princess Road, Lawrenceville 08648; 609-924-2189; fax, 609-895-7472. Albert Busch, president and CEO. Home page: www.datacolor.com.
Datacolor, a 38-year-old company in the business of digital color management technology, has announced that its parent company, Eichhof Holding AG in Switzerland, is selling its remaining real estate business interests, leaving Datacolor as the only operating company and paving the way for Eichhof Holding to rename itself with the Swiss stock exchange as Datacolor AG.
This development gives Datacolor the resources to develop a strategic growth plan as a standalone company.
As part of the company’s plan moving forward, the board of directors at Eichhof Holding AG has announced that Albert Busch, current vice president of Datacolor’s industrial business unit, will succeed Terry Downes as CEO of Datacolor effective January 1. Downes, a 35-year veteran at Datacolor and company CEO for the last seven years, will head a new business development team.
Busch has experience in electrical engineering, industrial management, and day-to-day business practices. It will be his job to focus the company on its core competencies.
“We are facing challenging times, both as a company and as individuals,” Busch said in a prepared statement, “but I am confident that with proper focus, and adapting our strategies and actions accordingly, we will steer the company towards sustainable and profitable growth.”
Busch, a Princeton resident, joined Datacolor 10 months ago.
Class Action
PharmaNet (PDGI), 504 Carnegie Center, Princeton 08540-6242; 609-951-6800; fax, 609-514-0390. Jeffrey McMullen, president and CEO. Home page: www.pharmanet.com.
PharmaNet Development Group, a contract research organization hit hard by a spate of project cancellations, is facing multiple class-action suits over alleged violations of federal securities laws.
Law firms including Howard G Smith, Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, the Brualdi Law Firm, Izard Nobel, and Dyer & Berens have filed the actions in District Court on behalf of shareholders who acquired PharmaNet common stock between November 1, 2007, and April 30, 2008.
The lawsuits allege that statements made by PharmaNet and certain of its executives during that period were “materially false and misleading” because they failed to disclose key factors, including the likelihood that a number of contracts in the CRO’s backlog would be canceled; PharmaNet had ramped up its expenses to fulfill these contracts, despite a strong likelihood that they would be canceled; and the company had entered into “highly risky” contracts with pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients.
The actions note that PharmaNet’s share price dropped from $23.86 to $17.10 after the CRO announced April 30 that it was lowering its financial guidance for 2008 to reflect the impact of late-stage cancellations, which it expected to shave around $30 million off projected revenues for the full year.
PharmaNet cut its 2008 outlook for the second time in September, citing mainly the cancellation or postponement of clinical development projects in its late-stage segment and a lower than expected sample volume of early-stage business.
The company’s stock, which had traded for as much as $43 a share this year, closed at 86 cents.
These events would undoubtedly sadden PharmaNet’s founder, the late Hein Besselaar, who started the company in 1995 after selling his first company, G.H. Besselaar, to Corning. Besselaar became a pioneer in the new pharmaceutical contract research industry when he founded G.H. Besselaar in 1976. That company began its life in a garage on Elm Street in Princeton and grew to 1,000 employees by the time that Besselaar left it in 1992 for a retirement in Bermuda that lasted all of three years.
Downsizing
Household Finance Corporation, 3100 Quakerbridge Road, Ames Plaza, Mercerville.
Household Finance Corporation is closing its Mercerville office.
HFC, part of financial giant HSBC, operates more than 300 offices in 39 states, and will continue to maintain offices in Mount Laurel and in Parlin. There also is a branch in Levittown, Pennsylvania. While a worker at the Quakerbridge Road branch did not say how many employees would be affected, he did say that all employees would be relocated and no jobs would be lost.
This office is the only location in the region that will be shutting down. It is expected to be closed by Christmas.
Unemployment Jobs
Growing unemployment is directly responsible for the creation of some jobs. Governor Corzine has directed the state’s labor commissioner to put on an additional 130 emergency workers to deal with the state’s growing unemployment claim backlog.
Forty-four of the new hires will stay on through the duration of the recession and 46 will be placed in the Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s One-Stop Career Centers.
“Today we learned that the national unemployment rate hit a 15-year high of 6.7 percent,” Corzine said on Friday, December 5. “In the last two months, thousands of New Jersey citizens have lost their jobs as a result of the economic downturn. We must take immediate measures to assist these workers as they apply for unemployment benefits.”
The department began hiring 77 intermittent staff two months ago to assist with the workload, 41 of whom are now on the job with others going through the hiring process.
Once new workers are available, the Reemployment Call Center’s hours will also be extended. It will operate from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, and on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Joint Venture
Netrics Inc., 707 State Road, Suite 212, Princeton 08540; 609-683-4002; fax, 609-497-9030. Stefanos Damianakis, president and CEO. Home page: www.netrics.com.
Netrics, a technology company that makes untangles data for its clients, has partnered with Skill, an IT services and systems integrator in the Czech Republic. Through this partnership, Skill will deliver the Netrics’ technology together with its own technology to companies and governmental entities throughout the Czech Republic. The technology addresses workflow, business process, and event notification.
“Many large Czech enterprises struggle to maintain consistent structured data that can be shared and managed effectively,” Antonin Koci, managing director of Skill, said in a prepared statement.”
The Netrics technology, which it calls Matching Platform, works at making data usable — both within and between disparate databases — despite any variations, inconsistencies, or duplications. It automates the matching and linking of data, even with errors, enabling businesses to make better business decisions based on their data.
Netrics is able to coordinate data in more than 40 languages.
Leaving Town
Levare Software, 12 Stults Road, Suite 106, Dayton 08810. Home page: www.levare.com.
Software development firm Levare Software, which moved from Iselin to Dayton in 2006 to accommodate growth, has left its Stults Road location.
The firm had operated offices here and in Cochin, India. The Cranbury site employed 25 people, but the grounds have been vacated and the telephone number disconnected. E-mails have gone unanswered and there is no further information.
Princeton Rep Shakespeare Festival, 44 Nassau Street, Suite 350, Princeton 08542. Home page: www.princetonrep.org.
The Princeton Rep Shakespeare Festival, a Professional Actors’ Equity theater company, appears to have ceased operations. The organization’s telephone number has been disconnected and the website is no longer valid. E-mails also have gone unanswered.
Founding director Victoria Liberatori recently directed a play in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but whether the company has moved there with her cannot be ascertained.
