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And a subsidiary of AIG chose a building we repositioned in Parsippany for its 117,000 square-foot offices. We also won new leases from the public sector, as the New Jersey Turnpike Authority took 100,000 square feet in Woodbridge, N.J., and the U.S. General Services Administration signed a 114,000 square-foot lease in one of our Washington, D.C., buildings.
Our leasing efforts had their effect. Portfolio-wide, Mack-Cali maintained occupancies, ending the year 91.0 percent leased, virtually unchanged from 91.2 percent in 2005. And our leased rates continued to be above average in most of our markets. (Specifically, we exceeded the average in Northern and Central New Jersey, Westchester County and suburban Philadelphia.)
Refinements to the Core Markets Strategy
As 2005 ended, the percentage of our rental income derived from Northeast properties exceeded 95 percent, underscoring our ongoing commitment to and presence in the region. Our longstanding acquisition and disposition strategy has been to concentrate on this core region, and indeed in 2005 we enhanced our presence in the Northeast and sold assets outside our favored geographic area of activity.
In 2005, we committed more than half a billion dollars to add appropriate properties to our portfolio. Among the acquisition highlights were three transactions adding over 1.8 million square feet of properties in New Jersey that we purchased for approximately $388 million.
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These included 101 Hudson Street in Jersey City, N.J., which increased our share of this important waterfront submarket to 25 percent. The other two acquisitions in the Garden State were in fast-growing Monmouth County–23 Main Street in Holmdel, the property we acquired and simultaneously leased to Vonage, and Monmouth Executive Center, a four-building complex in Freehold. We also contracted to acquire a class A office complex in Maryland –a transaction we completed in March 2006– to add seven buildings and over 842,000 square feet to our presence in the D.C. area, the nation's top market.
At the same time, we continued to take advantage of a robust investment sales market to sell non-core assets, completing more than $100 million in dispositions during the year. Transactions in Texas, Nebraska and Long Island marked our exits from those markets, significantly reducing our holdings outside the region we have identified as central to our strategy.
Headway on Development Projects
As we build our portfolio, Mack-Cali pursues select, low-risk development projects in which it can leverage its creativity, market knowledge and resources to participate in high-potential opportunities.
A good example is the 120,000 square-foot building that we are developing for AAA Mid-Atlantic on land located at an existing Mack-Cali office complex in Hamilton Township, N.J.
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