By BERNIE WEISENFELD
Courier-Post Staff
The developer of a proposed $25 million Camden waterfront office tower vowed Friday to try persuading Gov.-elect Christie Whitman to keep alive a state plan to lease office space there.
DKM Properties Corp. president Robert S. Powell said he was taken aback when the New Jersey Department of Treasury terminated a lease commitment to the 10-story tower. The state had planned to lease one-third of the 200,000-square-foot tower.
"I'm frankly surprised at the action the state has taken," Powell said of the pullout from DKM's long-delayed River's Edge Corporate Center. "We intend to discuss this with the new administration."
The building is seen as an important - but not crucial - part of Camden's waterfront redevelopment. And the state's involvement is a key factor in the construction. But a Treasury Department spokeswoman said Thursday that DKM hadn't met terms of a 3"-year-old agreement to complete the project.
The lease, which was to have lasted 10 years, will be void in 45 days.
The state had planned to consolidate several South Jersey offices in the tower, planned for a site just north of the State Aquarium.
The tower's primary tenant, Campbell Soup Co., still plans to move executive offices into the tower, spokesman Jim Moran said Friday.
But without state participation, the project is not viable, Powell said.
As recently as three months ago, state officials seemed committed to River's Edge, said Powell.
"Extensions we've gotten from the state on numerous occasions in the past have all been granted . . . They understood the difficulty in getting a project like this financed," he said.
Ironically, the state was notified in September that DKM had finally secured financing from a Japanese bank consortium. Soon afterward, state officials "began delaying completion of paperwork on the leases," Powell said.
The Florio Administration has effectively shelved the project, giving incoming Gov. Whitman ultimate veto power.
"I'm confident the incoming administration is going to want to proceed with this project," said Powell. Having invested about $2 million in engineering and site work, "we have no intention of backing away from this project," he said.
"I can't explain the state's action at this late date," other than by the departure of the Florio Administration on Jan. 18, said Powell. He said he wasn't able to talk with Florio officials this week.
The state's pullout "certainly is not fair or responsible in view of the benefits this project brings to the Camden waterfront," said Powell. It would mean "several hundred" office jobs in a prominent city location and about $450,000 a year in property taxes, he said.
"This is an unfortunate development but one we don't intend to let discourage us," he said. "We're going forward."
Still, losing River's Edge wouldn't be fatal to revitalizing Camden's waterfront, said John Shannon, executive vice president of Cooper's Ferry Development Corp., the quasi-public agency overseeing investment in the 60-acre downtown riverfront property. The impoverished city's revival has largely focused on the potential of this area.
"If the plug had been pulled on this (DKM) project several years ago, it would have arguably been a fatal development," said Shannon. "But with the opening of the aquarium and its relative success in the first year, with the planned groundbreaking of the DRPA (Delaware River Port Authority) headquarters building, with the ferry service between Camden and Penns Landing and with progress on the (Sony/Pace) amphitheater project, this is not as major a setback as it would have been."
Sony Entertainment Corp. and partners plan to build a $12 million indoor/outdoor concert amphitheater in Wiggins Park on the waterfront and the DRPA plans a new $20 million headquarters building facing the State Aquarium.
Whether or not DKM proceeds, "Given the substantial public investment made in an around this (River's Edge) site, we feel we will be able to develop in the near future," said Shannon.
The DRPA plans to break ground in the spring on a Camden waterfront office tower to replace its 65-year-old headquarters at the Benjamin Franklin Bridge Plaza in Camden. New Jersey state government has also committed to consolidating existing area offices into the new $20 million DRPA headquarters, next to the State Aquarium parking garage. The commitment stands, said DRPA Vice Chairman Peter Burke Jr., a New Jersey appointee of Gov. Florio.
Aegis Property Group, a Philadelphia firm that helped persuade the state to invest in two GE Aerospace buildings in Camden, is representing the DRPA in lease talks with the state, said Burke.
"I understand they're pretty close to a lease for 80,000 square feet" out of 200,000, he said. Indeed, DKM's failure to regain state leasing in its office "may be more opportunity for us" to increase state space, he said.
