Mack-Cali's vast land bank and development expertise continued to prove to be extremely valuable assets for the Company and the tenants we serve. We completed two significant class A office projects in New Jersey: Harborside Financial Center Plaza 4A, on the vibrant Jersey City waterfront--a 185,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art build-to-suit for TD Waterhouse with an 1100-car garage to accommodate parking for the Harborside complex; and, more recently, 105 Eisenhower Parkway in Roseland--a 220,000 square-foot office building at our Eisenhower/280 Corporate Center, to accommodate the expansion needs of long-time tenant Arthur Andersen. We also purchased 47 acres of developable land in Parsippany, New Jersey, with a joint venture partner. This land enables us to develop an additional 645,000 square feet of class A space in this prized submarket, where we now own land to develop up to 2 million square feet of space. In total, our strategically-located land bank--with many sites adjacent to existing Mack-Cali properties--gives us the unique competitive advantage to develop 9 million square feet of additional class A commercial space in our core markets. At Harborside Financial Center, we took significant steps toward realizing our vision for the complex as a "city within a city"--a comprehensive mixed-used urban class A campus serving some of the country's top corporations. With class A vacancies in this tight submarket approaching zero, we began construction of two class A office properties totaling nearly 1.6 million square feet, both to be completed in 2002. One of the projects, Harborside Financial Center Plaza 10, a 19-story 575,000 square-foot property, is 100% pre-leased by leading financial services firm Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. The other project, Harborside Financial Center Plaza 5, a 34-story, 980,000 square-foot office property started in the fourth quarter, already has pre-leasing commitments of over 146,000 square feet. Renovation work nears completion on Harborside's south pier, where joint venture partner Hyatt Hotels Corporation will construct a 350-room, full-service hotel. Rounding out the current phase of mixed-use development at Harborside will be the construction of a 300-unit luxury apartment complex to be built on the north pier through a joint venture with Lincoln Property Co., scheduled to begin this spring. In addition to demonstrating Mack-Cali's market strength, land value and expertise in development, leasing and property management, these projects reflect our ability to serve the expansion needs of both existing and new tenants with premier, technologically sophisticated properties in prime locations. |
At year-end approximately 60% of the office space in our portfolio was "wired" to provide our tenants with high-speed telecommunications and Internet access. We continue to make strides in this area, through our partnership with BroadBand Office--a company we formed with other leading real estate firms to provide cost-effective telecommunications services and network solutions to office tenants nationwide--and alliances with other leading telecommunications providers. In 2000, Mack-Cali also joined with 13 real estate companies to form the Office Technology Consortium to explore how best to implement technology for effective operations and tenant services. Our Company also invested with other firms in a Web-based property management workflow program, Workspeed, which is being beta-tested in some of our office properties and will enhance communications between tenants and their building managers. Mack-Cali will continue to explore other technology initiatives that directly benefit our tenants and our business.
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