FARRAH MAFFAI The former U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) building on Tinton Avenue in Tinton Falls has been vacant for three years. It is being marketed as the Tinton Telecom Center, LLC, by its present owners.
TINTON FALLS — Once a fat cash cow on the borough’s tax rolls, today the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) building on Tinton Avenue, is a mammoth, dried-up carcass that’s lost its commercial appeal.
The 737,000-square-foot building has been vacant for more than three years, and its grounds are now overgrown and in disrepair. The absence of tenants has contributed to a lack of maintenance, which has been an inviting force for vandals to further diminish the property’s value.
Though police patrol the building on a regular basis in an effort to ward off that vandalism, it’s still managed to become a defaced burden, with broken windows and occasional graffiti littering the site. Officials say they’d love to see it full of tenants ready for business, but "the office market is in a serious glut right now," said Borough Administrator Anthony Muscillo.
Bought nearly two years ago by Abraham Leser of Brooklyn, N.Y., the 737,000-square-foot facility built in 1974 by Dworman Building Corp. has been marketed as the Tinton Telecom Center, LLC, Muscillo said.
FARRAH MAFFAI The grounds of the former U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) building on Tinton Avenue, along with a broken window, are indications of the neglected and abandoned conditions on the site.
Thinking that perhaps the ramifications of Sept. 11 on New York might end up being somewhat of a business boon for the center’s fate — with businesses looking for space in which to relocate — officials say that theory fell through when the economy plummeted.
Most notably, that decline has resulted in significant staff reductions at local, large companies like Tyco, Verizon and AT&T, Muscillo said.
"I would’ve thought there’d be a need for more office space after Sept. 11," Muscillo continued, "but with those big companies around here downsizing, we’re still at what looks like a real impasse to get that building occupied."
But it’s not just getting the bodies in the building that Muscillo and other officials worry about. The fact that the building needs major renovations and is just falling more and more into disrepair is a major deterrence to tenants.
Leser bought the building from Matrix Development Group, Cranbury, for $14.75 million after about $2 million in landscaping, facade and soft cost (architectural, engineering surveys and renderings) work had been put into it, according to Muscillo.
When Matrix owned the building, the company estimated that it would cost $45 million to $50 million to upgrade it to first-rate office space. The entire inside would have to be gutted and rebuilt, the company projected. "There are other problems that would have to be remedied, too," Muscillo said. "For instance, the heat is all electric and very inefficient."
The building was constructed specifically for Army use 30 years ago, he added. That type of construction is not conducive to civilian, private industry use.
At its height under the Army’s occupancy, about 5,000 civilian and military employees filled the office building. The structure hasn’t had an active work population since 1993 when the Army opted out of its $15 million lease and moved its CECOM faction back to the main base on Fort Monmouth and the last of its employees left the grounds in 1998.
The area in which the building sits is zoned industrial office park (IOP), and Leser has asked officials on a number of occasions over the past two years to consider a zoning change to a mixed use, which was something they neither encouraged or discouraged. Leser was unavailable for comment.
Rather, Muscillo said, "We said we’d be willing to consider anything reasonable, but would need to see a proposal of some sort first. We asked them to come back to us with a proposal. That was [the last time] before the new year. We’ve heard nothing. They’ve done this for about the past six months to a year, back and forth, but we’ve yet to see any sort of ideas on paper."
While the empty shell is just a strain on the eyes to some, its value to the borough is a fraction of what it once was. Right now, according to Muscillo, the empty building is bringing in $369,960 a year in taxes, which is "better than nothing, but still about half of what it would bring in with occupants. The borough came to a compromise deal on the tax rate with Leser that is a carryover from the tax negotiation made with Matrix when they owned it."
The taxes for Leser are calculated the same way they were when Matrix purchased CECOM in a distressed sale, Muscillo explained. The assessment is based on land and building value rather than an income-approach calculation normally used for a business. The assessment of the property at $12 million was negotiated between Matrix and the borough. Matrix compromised to pay taxes on the building based on a $12 million value rather than the $9.5 million it bought the property for, or an income-approach-based tax figure. The compromise assessment gave Matrix a break because of the vacant status and lack of lease income while bringing taxes in for the borough.
When CECOM occupied the building, though, it was a ratable worth nearly twice as much. At its peak, the facility assessed at $30.5 million garnered $750,000 in annual taxes. "Something is better than nothing, of course," Muscillo said. "Still, we took a major hit [on taxes]."