Mack-Cali Buys Route 1 Frontage
Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the June 30, 2004
edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Life in the Fast Lane
David J. Sorin is leaving the College Road office of Hale & Dorr and
taking six colleagues with him to join the business and finance
practice of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius at the Carnegie Center. The
addition is certainly a coup for Steven Cohen, who leads that practice
at Morgan Lewis. Cohen’s firm now has 34 lawyers at the Carnegie
Center.
“We have been successful in growing our practice from 11 clients in
1998 to 125 at the time of this merger,” says Cohen of Morgan Lewis.
“Together, we will represent 250 emerging business and technology
companies, which is a very powerful critical mass to demonstrate to
the financial community — bankers, venture capitalists, and investment
partners. The additional size will allow two plus two to be much more
than four in terms of what we can do for our clients.”
“There are lots of good lawyers out there, and what clients often look
for is the connectivity — the ability to introduce them to strategic
partners and financial resources,” says Cohen. “Because of our
critical mass, representing 250 emerging growth companies, most of
which are in New Jersey, it gets the attention of the investment
banking community and the venture capitalists who are looking for
introductions to new companies to work with.”
The four new partners “are exceptional corporate finance and
technology transaction lawyers with industry experience in the growing
areas of information technology and life sciences,” says Francis M.
Milone, chairman of the Morgan Lewis, which has 1,200 lawyers in 18
cities. “Their IPO practice adds significantly to Morgan Lewis’
capabilities nationally and internationally.”
Sorin was a leader in building the infrastructure to support the New
Jersey/New York technology corridor. A graduate of New York University
and Fordham, Sorin co-founded the New Jersey Technology Council and in
the last three years his team represented clients in more than 400
transactions with a value of $18 billion. He started out at Smith
Stratton and was recruited by Pittsburgh-based Buchanan Ingersoll to
open a Princeton office in January, 1993. By 2001 the office with two
attorneys had grown to 60 attorneys. At that point, Sorin said
Buchanan Ingersoll did more IPO, mergers & acquisition, and venture
financing work for high tech companies than did any other firm in the
area.
Then he was recruited by Boston-based Hale and Dorr and walked out of
Buchanan Ingersoll with 32 attorneys and their support staff. “We
needed to be at a firm with considerably more depth and focus on high
technology,” he said at that time. “Instead of being at a firm where a
relative few focused on technology, I went with a firm with rich
expertise.”
Hale and Dorr merged last month and is now officially known as Wilmer
Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. Sorin is leaving with three partners
(Andy Gilbert, Karen Leisten, and Rich Mattessich), two associates and
one of counsel attorney.
Andrew P. Gilbert went to Colgate and Rutgers. He represents corporate
clients ranging from startup ventures to mature public companies, and
his securities experience includes representing issuers, underwriters,
and venture capital firms in connection with public and private
offerings.
Karen F. Leisten earned both her undergraduate and law degrees from
Fordham. She represents technology, biotech, and other clients in the
commercialization of technology assets and intellectual property
cases. She was on the team representing Hewlett-Packard in the Apple
v. Microsoft and Hewlett Packard case.
Richard S. Mattessich has been representing start-up ventures,
development stage and more mature private entities and publicly traded
companies. A CPA and MBA who went to Georgetown for his undergraduate
degree, he has an MBA from New York University and a law degree from
the University of Texas. He has been helping to raise capital for both
public offerings and private placement.
Cohen is delighted to have his former opponents on his side of the
fence. “In 1998 Morgan Lewis had asked me to grow the business and
finance practice in Princeton,” he says. “In Philadelphia we had
developed the premiere emerging business and tech/life science
business in the Philadelphia area. Often we represented more than 50
percent of the companies presenting at Philadelphia venture fairs. But
we had seen a lot of activity in New Jersey that we were not able to
capture from Philadelphia and New York.”
That was in the same time period that David Sorin was leading the
business practice at Buchanan Ingersoll and Hale & Dorr. “I have had a
lot of respect for them as competitors and they had a lot of respect
for us. We have worked on opposite sides of deals and we have trust,”
says Cohen.
What about future conflicts of interest? They won’t happen, says
Cohen. “Our primary goal is to represent emerging growth companies,”
says Cohen. So if Hale and Dorr represented a company, and Morgan
Lewis represented the investor in that company, then the investor will
have to use a different law firm. Companies make better clients than
investors.
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, 502 Carnegie Center, Suite 301, Princeton
08540-6273. Robert Alan White, managing partner. 609-919-6600; fax,
609-919-6639. www.morganlewis.com
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Biotech Report Card
New Jersey came out way ahead in two major studies on bioscience
issued earlier this month. It turns out that it is among only three
states with a specialty in three of the four bioscience industry
sub-sectors, according to a comprehensive survey conducted by
Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), Battelle Memorial
Institute, SSTI, and Fleishman-Hillard International Communications.
Entitled “Laboratories of Innovation: State Bioscience Initiatives
2004,” the survey measured the level of employment concentration
within a state as compared to the nation. It identified New Jersey’s
sub-sector specialties as pharmaceuticals, medical devices and
equipment, and research and testing. The study also reported that
university investment in research and development is up 30 percent
from 2001.
A Deloitte & Touche study measured the economic impact of the
biotechnology industry on New Jersey. It revealed that biotech
companies employ nearly 8,000 employees, and that does not count those
employed by pharmaceutical and medical technology firms. This amounts
to more than $892 million of labor income annually.
The Biotechnology Council of New Jersey has also released the New
Jersey Life Sciences Resource Guide. The guide and the two major
reports are available by calling BCNJ at 609-890-3185 or at the
website (www.biotechnj.org).
The key factors that seem to influence bioscience employment,
according to the Battelle survey, include available capital, access to
facilities and equipment, a stable and supportive tax and regulatory
environment, a long-term perspective, and to what degree the research
institutions get involved.
New Jersey has the extra advantage of being the second state in the
nation to legalize stem cell research and the first to provide state
funding for it, through the new New Jersey Stem Cell Research
Institute.
“Biotechnology companies in New Jersey benefit from the state’s rich
academic environment, highly skilled labor pool, large concentration
of pharmaceutical companies — including 17 of the 20 largest
pharmaceutical companies in the world that have major facilities in
the state — and innovative and supportive government programs and
policies,” says Kenneth I. Moch, president and CEO of Parsippany-based
Alteon Inc. and chairman of the Biotechnology Council of New Jersey
(BCNJ). The success factors:
Access to a skilled labor pool. New Jersey is ranked eighth in the
nation in biological scientists in the workforce. The average number
of these scientists from fiscal 2000-2002 was 17,880, compared with
461,973 in the entire United States.
Academic/industrial interaction is encouraged through bioscience
research parks: New Jersey Technology Center in North Brunswick
located between Rutgers and Princeton universities, University Heights
Science Park, under development in the central ward of Newark by a
consortium of four universities and colleges, and the Waterfront
Technology Center at Camden.
Commitment to building bioscience R&D. Due to several recent
investments, total university life science expenditures in New Jersey
have gone up more than 30 percent in three years.
Capital made available to bioscience companies by encouraging the
venture capitalists, direct company financing, and facilities
financing.
Support for bioscience entrepreneurs and emerging bioscience companies
is available through business development services, bioscience
industry organizations, and lab incubators.
“These report findings once again underscore why New Jersey is the
ideal location for bioscience companies,” says Debbie Hart, president
of Biotechnology Council of New Jersey. “With unparalleled
collaboration between industry, academe and government, the
Biotechnology Council of New Jersey, as its sole mission, will work to
ensure that this vital industry continues to thrive in our state.”
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Mack-Cali Buys Route 1 Frontage
Even though Mack-Cali Realty Corporation has yet to finish developing
two prime properties that it owns in Princeton, it bought 60 acres of
land at Route 1 and Meadow Road from Steiner Equities Group. The $20.5
million sale was announced on Monday, June 28. It comes with approvals
to develop 770,000 square feet of commercial space, including a hotel
and four office buildings totaling 607,000 square feet.
Mack-Cali’s new property has some frontage on Route 1. It is between
the Carnegie Center and the Meadow Road overpass, north of the new
Lowe’s shopping center.
Headquartered in Cranford, the real estate investment trust owns
Princeton Overlook on Route 1, to which two more buildings can be
added. It has more approved land on Vaughn Drive for an office
building, bringing the potential for development to 1 million square
feet. It also owns and manages 103 Carnegie Center, 500 College Road,
and 3 Independence Way.
“With the scarcity of developable land in the region, this transaction
allowed us the opportunity to acquire land in what is perhaps the top
location in the Princeton submarket,” says Mitchell E. Hersh,
Mack-Cali’s president and CEO.
Mack-Cali Realty Corporation (CLI), 103 Carnegie Center, Suite 321,
Princeton 08540. 609-452-0648; fax, 609-452-0651. www.mack-cali.com
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Medarex Expands
Medarex announced on Friday, June 25, that it will pay $4.7 million
for Ability Biomedical Corporation, a privately held Canadian
biotechnology company. The acquisition is expected to be completed in
August, and it will be paid in a combination of cash and/or Medarex
stock.
Medarex is particularly interested in Ability Biomedical’s
intellectual property on IP-10, a protein believed to be associated
with such immune disorders as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid
arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease, and type I diabetes. IP-10 is also known as CXCL10.
IP-10 is currently the focus of preclinical studies for MDX-1100, a
fully human antibody from Medarex. The company expects to file an
Investigational New Drug application with the FDA for MDX-1100 in the
first half of 2005.
If the IP-10 antibody program goes well, in three years Medarex will
have to pay an additional $3.56 million in cash and/or Medarex stock.
The fall back position will be that Medarex can revert to the original
January 2003 joint collaboration agreement with Ability Biomedical.
Focusing on therapeutics to treat life-threatening and debilitating
diseases, Medarex has the UltiMAb Human Antibody Development System,
which creates and develops fully human antibodies.
Ability Biomedical is a private two-year-old firm supported by
GrowthWorks Capital Ltd. With locations in Vancouver, British
Columbia, and Irvine, California, Ability Biomedical has leveraged
discoveries made by Thomas E. Lane and Hans S. Keirstead at the
University of California.
“We have been pleased with our previous collaboration with Ability
Biomedical, and we believe that this acquisition strengthens our
position to develop antibody therapeutics to a potentially important
target implicated in many inflammation and autoimmune diseases,” says
Medarex CEO Donald L. Drakeman.
Earlier this month Medarex announced that the U.S Food and Drug
Administration has granted orphan drug designation to a fully human
anti-CTLA-4 antibody, MDX-010, for the treatment of high-risk Stage
II, Stage III and Stage IV melanoma.
The designation provides eligibility for a special seven-year period
of market exclusivity upon approval, potential tax credits for
research, grant funding for research and development, reduced filing
fees for marketing applications and assistance with the review of
clinical trial protocols. It is granted for treatments that offer
potential therapeutic value for diseases that affect fewer than
200,000 people in the U.S.
Another Medarex success was that a Phase II clinical trial for
refractory Hodgkin’s disease showed some success with 18 percent of
the patients. All the patients in the trial had had no success with at
least two other therapies.
Medarex (MEDX), 707 State Road, Princeton 08540. Donald L. Drakeman,
president and CEO. 609-430-2880; fax, 609-430-2850. www.medarex.com
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Intellisphere Expands
Intellisphere LLC, a medical publisher at Princeton Meadows Office
Center, doubled its size by buying Hospital Research Associates, a
market research firm for the pharmaceutical industry. The purchase
price was not disclosed.
Hospital Research Associates was formerly a division of Medimetrik
Inc., a marketing communications and research company based in
Fairfield. The 30-person firm, now a division of Intellisphere,
provides telephone surveys, convention-based research, focus groups,
and personal interviews. In more than 400 hospitals it has the
infrastructure in place to collect data on drugs and diagnosis through
patient case histories. HRA will be able to tap Intellisphere’s
databases to get access to additional physicians.
The son of a publisher, Michael Hennessy is CEO of Intellisphere,
which used to be part of Multimedia Healthcare. He founded that in
1992 and then took in a major investor, Freedom LLC. In 2002 he bought
the Internet side of the business. The print side (called Multimedia
Healthcare/Freedom LLC) is now totally separate and located at 4365
Route 1 South (www.mmhc.com).
Intellisphere’s COO, Herbert A. Marek, reports that the firm had an
average annual revenue increase of 63 percent over five years, and it
sold more than 1,000 ad pages last year. Marek went to Kean College
and has a master’s in science from Rutgers and an MBA from Fairleigh
Dickinson. After working in marketing and business development for
pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson he was general
manager and executive vice president at Medical World Communications,
a company headed by Jack Hennessy, Michael Hennessey’s brother. He
started working for Michael Hennessey in 1997.
Intellisphere’s major product, MD Net Guide, is a print journal and a
biweekly Internet newsletter/website with useful links. “MD Net Guide
is the only multimedia vehicle of its kind that provides a roadmap to
the Internet,” says Marek, “helping as many as 250,000 physicians keep
up with the confusing array of medical information available online.”
The acquisition of HRA will help Intellisphere acquire a much broader
range of marketing and educational programs.
Among HRA’s more than 30 employees are registered nurses and trained
medical interviewers who conduct telephone surveys, convention-based
research, focus groups and personal interviews.
Intellisphere also has nine specialty editions, including physicians’
guides and such custom publications as “Focus on African-American
Health” and “Family Medicine Net Guide,” a waiting room magazine for
consumers. Intellisphere has also started an education division, which
could have synergy with the website and the research division, HRA.
The combined companies will have more than 60 employees, says Marek,
but at least for now HRA will stay in Fairfield, where it occupies
nearly 7,000 square feet. Intellisphere has a comparable space, about
6,300 square feet.
How it happened: “I put together a business plan that identified
pharmaceutical market research as an area we wanted to get into,” says
Marek. DeSilva & Phillips, of Park Avenue in New York, had been the
investment bankers that put together the Multimedia Healthcare/Freedom
deal, and Marek had kept up that contact. “We made sure they knew what
we were doing, and that we had a strategic vision. They brought the
acquisition to our attention, we evaluated it, and it took about 30
seconds to say yes.”
Intellisphere, 666 Plainsboro Road, Suite 300, Plainsboro 08536.
Michael Hennessy, CEO. 609-716-7777; fax, 609-716-4747.
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New in Town
D.R. Horton Associates opened a state-wide design center at the former
headquarters location for AAA on Route 130. In New Jersey the firm
builds from 600 to 800 houses a year, ranging from town homes to
houses costing more than $1 million. Its roots are in a company called
S.G.S. Communities, founded in 1992, and acquired by a national firm,
Texas-based D.R. Horton. The New Jersey headquarters is in Freehold.
The closest D.R. Horton development to Princeton is the Village Grand
at Bear Creek in West Windsor. An adult community, it consists of 540
single detached homes costing in the mid $250s, plus 14 affordable but
smaller homes, selling in the $70s. An association fee pays for the
16,000-foot clubhouse and a social director, and each cul de sac has
an special feature, such as a putting green, a horseshoe pit, or a
special garden.
Other adult communities are in Manalapan, Egg Harbor, and West
Deptford, and all-ages housing developments are in Bordentown, Delran,
Moorestown and West Deptford.
Lisa Dawson, a 13-year-veteran of D.H. Horton and the mother of three
children, is in charge of the new 4,300 square foot design center,
which will soon have seven employees. Homebuyers come here to select
cabinets, countertops, bathroom upgrades, flooring, HVAC, appliances,
and even doors and windows. Her oldest daughter also works for the
firm.
D.R. Horton Associates (DHI), 1 AAA Drive, Suite 104, Robbinsville
08691. Lisa Dawson, design center manager. 609-586-6612; fax,
609-586-6614. www.drhorton.com
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Contracts Awarded
Princeton Communications Group has created print, radio and television
ads in English and Spanish for New Jersey’s $1.2 million advertising
and awareness campaign for 18 federally qualified health centers. The
campaign, which began in the middle of May, is part of the state
health department’s $10 million budget to fund infrastructure and
growth grants for the centers, which are overseen by the New Jersey
Primary Care Association.
The ads are posted on the inside and outside of NJ Transit buses and
trains. They are on television on TBS, BET, MTV, Cartoon Network and
Lifetime programs, and on the radio on black-targeted and Latino radio
stations.
Each center is featured as “The Feel Good Place.” For instance, when a
television ad features a black couple holding a little girl, the man
says, “It’s healthcare at its best,” and a voiceover of a woman says,
“We think of it as the feel good place.”
“The purpose is to upgrade public awareness and perception of the high
quality services that these centers provide,” says Mike Keeler,
executive vice president of the ad agency. “We wanted to position them
as a place to go, not just in an emergency, but when you needed help
and wanted to feel good about the care you are getting and where you
are getting it.”
For instance, the Henry J. Austin center on Warren Street in Trenton
is sometimes perceived as being only for the uninsured. “But because
of the breadth of services it provides, it represents a wonderful
healthcare choice for anyone,” says Keeler. Among the Austin center
services are pediatrics, adult medicine, OB/Gyn, prenatal, dental,
adolescent health education, nutrition and HIV counseling. In
addition, it offers 24-hour emergency service, the services of a
social worker, and is bilingual. It takes most insurance plans.
Princeton Communications Group came up with the slogan as a result of
indepth interviews across the network of centers. “We interviewed
thought leaders and nurses to triangulate about what these centers,
and what they should be,” says Keeler. “What people want to talk about
is not their problems, but the resolution of the problems.”
“There was a perception problem, and the centers needed to be
branded,” says Krampf. The contract came through the New Jersey
Primary Care Association, not through the state. Instrumental in
getting the contract, Krampf says, was the ad agency’s association
with Nancy Becker Associates, a public affairs group.
“A key point of the contract is that not a single dollar of spending
goes outside the state,” says Keeler. “It was very difficult to
construct a media plan that did not use New York and Philadelphia, but
it gave us an opportunity to show our creativity.”
Princeton Communications Group Inc., 112 Titus Mill Road, Pennington
08534. Lawrence H. Krampf, chief executive officer. 609-818-9800; fax,
609-818-9213. Home page: www.pcgads.com
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Deaths
Robert C. Saums, 80, on June 26. He had worked in the family business,
Saums Interiors, since itw as founded in 1957. The funeral is
Thursday, July 1, at 10 a.m. at St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in
Hopewell.
Arlene Moore, 48, on June 26. She was a staff assistant at in the
National Assessment of Educational Progress Department of Educational
Testing Service.
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