Corrections or additions?
These articles were prepared by Barbara Fox for the April 27, 2005
issue of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Life in the Fast Lane
Whatever happened to that "glass house" at 1315 Canal Road that at one
time was on the market for $18 million and failed to sell at auction
for $3 million?
It did get sold, six months after the auction, in October, 2003, for
$2.5 million.
To recap: In 2001 John and Prudence Morgan Boulton had put the house,
called Chalan Farm, on the market for $18 million, then reduced it to
$12 million. Boulton declined to say what it cost to build the house
he had designed himself. The house is 425 feet long, with
floor-to-ceiling octagonal glass pavilions that offer a 360-degree
view to the outside. With 17,000 square feet on the glass-walled
ground floor, and the same amount of space in the basement, the house,
at sale time, had just four bedrooms and four baths. It also had
14-foot ceilings, an indoor pool, a Jacuzzi, an eight-car garage, a
4,000 gallon liquid gas storage system, a $1.5 million HVAC system, a
25-line telephone feed, recording studio, wine cellar, gym, and row
upon row of industrial shelving.
When the house first went on the market, interviews with contractors
revealed that the very exacting homeowner had disputed some of their
charges (U.S. 1, December 12, 2001).
After the house did not sell for $12 million, the Boultons hired
Alabama-based J.P. King Auction Company to sell it in spring, 2003
(U.S. 1, April 23, 2003).
Some of the disputes with contractors apparently escalated. At the
time of the auction, caveats on the auctioneer’s web page disclosed
litigation regarding the curtain wall and cement floor installations.
At least one contractor is still in litigation with the Boultons.
The new owners are Mr. and Mrs. Gunther Bright of Manhattan. Bright,
an executive with American Express Global Corporate Services, has said
he would prefer to leave his plans for the unusual property
"unspecified."
The Boultons, who said they were selling the house to move to New York
City, have turned up in Marietta, Ohio, where they bought a
four-bedroom house for less than $286,000.
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Crime Watch
Every accountant knows that internal theft – products going out the
door in the pockets of an employee – can wreak havoc with a company’s
profit margin. Victory Packaging, on Corn Road in Dayton, successfully
faced and conquered that threat, with the result that it was able to
clean house and have two employees arrested by South Brunswick
Township police.
It was a textbook example, says Detective James Ryan, of how a company
can make an open-and-shut case to prove internal theft. "The company
realized that it had product loss last year," says Ryan. "They were
not able to specify the loss because of record keeping issues. At one
point in time $20,000 of tape was missing. So they changed management
and made internal changes."
One evening Victory’s security staff audited the contents of the all
the trucks and found that one truck had more products than it was
scheduled to have. When the truck left the dock on March 22, it was
tailed by a security team with a video camera.
"The drivers were having someone load extra packaging material and
adding extra loads onto their trucks," says Ryan. "Some of the normal
customers they were delivering to were paying paid cash on the side.
Customer loyalty had been deeply eroded."
"Company officials told us mid-day that they were trying to confirm
their suspicions," says Ryan. "When the driver stopped at a location
that wasn’t on the list, they alerted us. We stopped the truck when it
came back to South Brunswick. Before he knew what we were looking for,
the driver denied he had many of those stops, and then we produced the
video tapes."
The two arrested employees, according to a report in the South
Brunswick Sentinel, were Miguel Tejada, 34, and Sergio Gomez, 39.
Gomez was allegedly the worker who loaded merchandise onto Tejada’s
delivery truck. They were charged with the theft of about $10,000 in
merchandise, and they posted bail.
In this case, says Ryan, "the bulk of the work had been done by the
company. We have cases all the time where the documentation isn’t
sufficient to prove a criminal charge."
732-274-1745. Michael O’Malley, manager.
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JDS Downsizes
On April 20 JDS Uniphase, a manufacturer of optoelectronic devices for
fiber optic communications networks, announced it will reduce its
manufacturing jobs by more than 15 percent. The R&D jobs will stay in
Ewing, but the manufacturing jobs will disappear.
Some jobs in Ewing will be combined with those in Melbourne, Florida,
and go to Shenzhen, China. This will take place by the end of the
year. Additional manufacturing jobs in Ewing and Mountain Lakes will
be transferred to Thailand-based Fabrinet, JDS Uniphase’s
manufacturing partner, by the end of June.
"These initiatives are part of a multi-quarter business transformation
strategy for JDS Uniphase to achieve profitability by reducing cost
structure and improving corporate agility," said CEO Kevin Kennedy in
a press release. "We firmly believe that our ability to restructure
major operations and rationalize our current portfolio, while
investing in next-generation products, positions JDS Uniphase for
success and differentiates us from the competition."
JDSU also has manufacturing sites in Ottawa and Santa Rosa and San
Jose, California. As of April 4, there were 350 jobs on Ludlow Drive.
Business Park, Ewing 08638. 609-538-1800; fax, 609-538-8122. Home
page: www.jdsu.com
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Real Estate Moves
Suite 102, Hamilton 08619-1209. Gerard J. Fennelly, president.
609-520-0061; fax, 609-631-9208. Home page: www.fennelly.com
Plainsboro is getting a new mixed-use lifestyle community, Plainsboro
Village Center, and Jerry Fennelly of NAI Fennelly is in charge of
leasing the office component for the builder, Sharbell Development
Corp.
It will be located on Scudders Mill Road, across Schalks Crossing Road
from an existing shopping center, Plainsboro Plaza. In addition to a
"village square" with a total of 48,000 square feet and a mix of
residential homes, there will be nearly 55,000 square feet of office
space. The first building will have 5,750 feet of office space and
7,250 feet of retail space.
"Steel is in the air," says Fennelly. "It’s not often that you find a
property with the convenience of office/retail space and yet with
housing just a stone’s throw away." The first building is expected to
be finished by September.
Housing was the component that was missing from Princeton Forrestal
Village in 1987. Theoretically, homeowners from Princeton Landing were
going to take advantage of the retail and office environment of
Forrestal Village, but a road was never cut through, and the residents
had to get in their cars and drive to PFV.
The Plainsboro Village Center may be more effectively compared to the
successful Washington Town Center. "We’re seeing a growing demand by
users who want the convenience of leaving their office or home and
being able to walk to pick up coffee, dinner, or dry cleaning with
just a few short steps," says Tom Troy, senior vice president of
Sharbell.
The quintessential combo of housing, office, and retail is of course,
Palmer Square. But Plainsboro presumably won’t have parking problems.
Trenton 08611. Carmen Melendez. 609-392-2900; fax, 609-396-0721.
Carmen N. Natal-Melendez is expanding her real estate company by
opening a second Trenton office, across from City Hall, at 320 East
State Street. Her focus is to train low and moderate income families
for homeownership opportunities in the city.
"One of our main goals," says Melendez in a press release, "is to
educate families – whether they work, visit, or are touring the
downtown area – to show them the many homeownership opportunities in
the City of Trenton."
The company closed more than $43 million in sales volume since it was
founded less than a year ago, and agents have trained more than 250
families.
Princeton 08540. Phillip Benjamin, 609-514-1799; fax, 609-514-1791.
Home page: www.patrinely.com
The sale of 100 and 150 College Road West closed in late March,
according to the online trade publication GlobeSt.com. The Patrinely
Group developed the two buildings, along with an investment fund, and
sold it to New Valley Corporation, based in Miami, for $54 million in
2003. Two years later, New Valley has turned it around to sell it for
$71.5 million, according to GlobeSt, which quoted a "source with
knowledge of the transaction" as saying that the buyer is a
Swiss-based investment group.
The 225,700-foot complex is the North American headquarters of Novo
Nordisk, and another major tenant is American Re. Included are a
full-service cafeteria, a fitness center, and nine parking spaces.
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Expansions
American Metro Center, Hamilton 08619. Ian Kelly, managing director of
sales and marketing. 609-221-2988; fax, 609-912-0607. Home page:
At the end of this month Accelera Corporation will expand my moving a
35-person office from 3131 Princeton Pike to 10,750 square feet at the
American Metro Center.
Founded in 1981, Accelera develops custom content for the
life-sciences industry to accelerate the global adoption of advanced
medical products. It has content creation products for sales training,
product launches, virtual preceptorships, casebased learning,
marketing communications, continuing medical education, medical video
production.
Accelera Corporation bought Kenexa’s Learning Solutions Group in 2004,
and the company in Princeton has also been known as Raymond Karsan
Associates. Accelera is a licensee of Johns Hopkins University.
Kim Theobald, manager of corporate services, is the human resources
contact and Tony Zorc, controller, is in charge of purchasing.
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Leaving Town
Southington CT 06489. 800-486-2190; fax, 860-621-9376. Home page:
The four-person distribution center for a manufacturer of motion
control equipment has closed on North Center in North Brunswick. Sales
are being handled in Connecticut.
The firm primarily makes DC controls, but also manufactures a line of
compatible products which includes positioning tables, motors,
controls, brakes, clutches, sensors, relays, and robots. The
family-owned firm is headquartered in Glendale, California.
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Deaths
Thomas Gibney, 57, on April 9, of ocular melanoma. He was a computer
programmer at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Benjamin B. Tregoe Jr., 77, on April 20. He was co-founder and
chairman emeritus of Kepner-Tregoe Inc., an international management
consulting firm on Research Road.
Paul R. Foley on April 21. A 1954 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy,
he retired in 2003 from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.
Thomas S. Madiara 20, on April 24. He was the Internet manager for
Audi of Princeton.
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