Deugen Development transforms, sells last-mile industrial stop (photos)

Marking its successful redevelopment, Hoboken-based Deugen Development sold a former Sun Chemical manufacturing facility now a modern, last-mile industrial stop.

Sagard Real Estate’s approximately $19.4 million acquisition of the 47,000-square-foot building at 390 Central Ave. in East Rutherford was one of the top deals of the first quarter of the year .

The building is fully occupied by Restaurant Technologies. It includes: 3,000 square feet of office space, four loading docks, two drive-in doors, 36-foot clear heights and 41 parking spaces.

Serving as its Northern New Jersey Hub, cooking oil delivery and recycling company Restaurant Technologies serves more than 80 fast food and fast casual restaurants around the northern New Jersey area.

“The property is 14 miles from Port Newark, and 17 miles from Port Jersey, and is situated in the Meadowlands submarket, home to some of the largest national and regional distributors looking to service the port with excellent connectivity within the greater tri-state area,” Sagard Senior Managing Director, Head of Equity John Maurer stated when the deal was announced.

Kevin Dudley at CBRE found the buyer. Avison Young served as listing broker and secured the tenant .

“It took us basically nine months to build the project and all the while, we were quietly putting it out to potential buyers,” Deugen Development CEO Eric Gormeley told NJBIZ earlier this spring.

The work entailed some remediation as well as completely razing the former Sun Chemicals factory at 390 Central Ave. Now, in its place, stands a new, Class A warehouse.

Ready to go

“We were so ready to go,” Gormeley said, commenting on the timeline. To be project-ready at closing and get ahead of then-rampant supply chain disruptions and delays Gormeley said he ordered steel for the design around late 2020/early 2021.

The team also purchased all its roof insulation eight months ahead of time, “just because we knew how difficult it was to get those items along with all of our electrical components,” Gormeley said.

Deugen Development’s purchase of the site, arranged by Avison Young, was announced in August 2022.

Despite the quick turnaround, Gormeley said in the midst of the process, “it felt like a really long time.”

Gormeley said the East Rutherford work comes as vertically integrated real estate development and construction firm Deugen Development looks to make more of a push into the industrial space, following mostly concentrating in multifamily in the last couple of years.

“Particularly smaller industrial projects 50,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet,” he explained.

In addition to development, Deugen Development operates as third-party GCs.

The CEO himself represents his family’s fourth generation in construction.

“If people are looking for help with instruction, expertise or how to go about doing one of these developments, we do offer those services as well,” Gormeley explained.

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