Suburban Office Lease Winner

Radnor Technology and Research Center

When the Rubenstein Co. LP completed its purchase of 17 office and laboratory buildings from Wyeth-Ayerst in Radnor last year, it was left with the challenge of marketing a group of holdings that varied widely in age, size, function, quality and design.

The biggest challenge was the 228,887-square-foot research building, which included 46,000 square feet of office space, with the remainder being chemistry and biotech labs.

In four months, Peter A. Talman of the Rubenstein Brokerage Group Inc. contacted more than 200 pharmaceutical companies and another 30 biotech firms, seek- ing a tenant. Two dozen potential users toured the facility. Meanwhile, persistent efforts to get the attention of executives at Centocor Inc., a Malvern-based maker of cardiovascular and arthritis drugs, eventually paid off. Officials of Centocor and its parent, Johnson & Johnson, agreed to have a look.

Centocor, said Theresa McMenamin of Brite Realty Services Inc., who represented the company, was interested in renting the top two floors of the five-story research building, and was especially inter- ested in the 44,000-square-foot vivarium ÷ an animal research facility ÷ in the basement.

There were concerns. For one thing Radnor was farther afield than Centocor had planned to go.

We were looking at facilities closer to home, but none had the size and scope this one did," said Jill Tiracorda of Centocor. Centocor's reservations, according to Tiracorda, had to do with "the condition of the facility, and how we would go about subdividing a single tenant facility" into one for multi-users. Specifically, Centocor wanted mechanical systems updated and separated out to eliminate any possibility that its researchers would experience electrical or water outages.

"If something happens to the building mechanically, that can jeopardize an incredible amount of experimentation and invalidate results," McMenamin said.

Talman recalled the day when 18 Centocor and J&J officials arrived; he referred

to it as "the biggest tour of my life." Personnel from the prospective tenant questioned Rubenstein about the building's engineering and raised a number of issues that needed to be resolved, including utilities and backups and the operating condition of the labs.

Ultimately, Centocor submitted a punch list of more than a 1,000 items, among the most important of which was certifying that the labs were properly decommis- sioned by Wyeth-Ayerst, which had used toxins in its research.

"Rubenstein was very helpful in working with us," Tiracorda said. "For two months, we did due diligence side-by-side so that we could understand how to run the building and how to separate systems, so that our floors run independently of the other floors of the building. We're happy with the way it worked out."

Selling Centocor on the research building ÷ since recommissioned as the Radnor

Technology and Research Center ÷ puts Rubenstein in a position to attract tenants of similar quality when Wyeth-Ayerst vacates the remainder of the properties it once owned at the end of 2003.

"It sets the stage for attracting the type of people we're going to be doing business with in selling the entire portfolio," Talman said. "We feel like we hit a home run." ð