Onyx Equities has a history of going big. Last year, the firm acquired most of the Gateway Center complex in Newark. In 2017, Onyx purchased a large Bergen County property portfolio from Mack-Cali. And recently, the firm bought another big collection of properties in Morris County. The seller again was Mack-Cali.
For this installment of NJBIZ Conversations, Editor Jeff Kanige spoke with Onyx Co-founder and Managing Partner John Saraceno about what’s happening in Newark and throughout the commercial real estate market in New York and New Jersey.
“Post-9/11 there was a significant migration out of New York City, there was a tremendous safety concern about living there and working there and justifiably so. But what happened was a year later, there was this migration back into New York and those that left quickly and abandoned their space or abandoned their leasehold positions were forced to find themselves trying to get back in at a more costly enterprise than they were when they left,” Saraceno said in discussing how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the office market. “That’s not so long ago and it’s not so far outside of our memory that people are taking a more cautious approach.” Watch the entire interview here.
