New Jersey State of the Market

Ross oversees VREP’s operations, development, redevelopment, acquisitions and leasing functions. In this role, he spearheads the business planning, strategy and planning of those functions. Throughout his career, Ross has been involved in the acquisition, development and leasing of over $1Billion in office, industrial and retail properties and portfolios. He has directed the development, redevelopment, and leasing of over 6 million square feet of properties encompassing over 600 acres. Most recently, Ross oversaw the team that executed the Bayer Healthcare North American Headquarters build-to-suit on 94 acres, part of the master-planned development of the former Alcatel Lucent 200-acre site in Hanover, N.J. The execution on the remaining 100 acres included master planning and land sale to Bayer in addition to a 185,000 SF Build-to-Suit for Metlife’s Investment headquarters. Under Ross’s leadership, the Bayer project was recently awarded the New Jersey NAIOP deal of the year, the NJBIA New Good Neighbor Award, the United Way Commercial Real Estate Impact Award and Morris County (NJ) deal of the year. The project is certified LEED Gold and during demolition achieved a recyclable materials rate of over 90%.

Ralph Zucker is President of Somerset Development, one of the New York Metropolitan region’s foremost pioneers of New Urbanism and Traditional Neighborhood Design development. Throughout his career, Zucker has worked hands-on in every facet of the building and development process, and has demonstrated a commitment to working with municipalities to create innovative communities based on the principles of New Urbanism. Zucker is perhaps best known for Bell Works, the two-million-square-foot redevelopment of the former Bell Labs property in Holmdel, N.J., where he and the Somerset Development team successfully transformed the iconic Saarinen-designed research facility into a “metroburb,” a term that Somerset coined to describe the suburban building’s revival into a blossoming, downtown-style ecosystem of technology, traditional office, retail, dining and hospitality. Today, Zucker and his team are in the midst of redeveloping The Ameritech Center in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, originally built as the former AT&T research facility, into Bell Works Chicagoland. The 1.65-million square foot building, which has already welcomed retail and office tenants, is quickly transforming into another successful metroburb. Under Zucker’s leadership, Somerset and its projects have earned numerous industry awards and recognition for their contributions to furthering responsible development practices, including the New Jersey Future Smart Growth Award for Wesmont Station, Somerset's 70-acre transit-oriented mixed-use redevelopment located in Wood-Ridge, N.J., where Somerset partnered with NJ TRANSIT to build a brand new train station that provides access to Manhattan.

Kevin Collins has more than three decades of experience in corporate and real estate finance and asset management. Prior to joining Lotus’ related company, C & K Properties, Mr. Collins worked for several notable NYC real estate firms, including Cross & Brown, MJ Raynes Real Estate, Property Resources Corp., and The Broadstone Group. Mr. Collins’ responsibilities in all instances included asset management and supervision of accounting and financial functions. Mr. Collins’ experience spans all aspects of the real estate spectrum including commercial office and residential asset and property management, residential development, and hospitality management in both the NYC market and several major markets across the US. Since joining C & K Properties in 2000, Mr. Collins has overseen the asset management of over 5 million square feet of the firm’s asset holdings while also maintaining responsibility for all accounting and financial functions. C & K’s assets included multi-family residential, commercial office, industrial, and core urban retail properties located primarily in the NY/NJ metropolitan region. Mr. Collins has closed property related transactions totaling more than $1.5B in for the firm and more than $3.0B in his career. Mr. Collins presently oversees Lotus Equity Group’s asset management department, including direct responsibility for the operations of 2 Gateway Center, Newark, NJ’s largest commercial office building. Mr. Collins also serves as Lotus Equity Group’s liaison with various governmental and community organizations, serving as Chairman of the Board of the Newark Downtown District and as a member of the board of the Newark Regional Business partnership. Mr. Collins holds a BS degree in Business Management from Fordham University.

Mr. Witmondt is the CEO of Woodmont Properties, a privately-owned regional real estate investment and development business founded by his father in 1963. Since joining the company in 1993, Eric has transformed the company into a full-service vertically integrated real estate firm that acquires, entitles, finances, develops, constructs, sells, leases and manages a wide range of properties. Woodmont employs more than 190 people in NJ and PA. Since 2007, Woodmont has constructed more than 17 luxury apartment communities throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania and is currently building 1,000 apartments in Princeton, Roxbury, Ramapo, Secaucus and Upper Macungie, PA. Woodmont, well known for its transit-oriented development, has a development pipeline containing more than 3,000 apartments, 800 luxury homes and one million square feet of industrial space. During the past seven years, the company has acquired, sold or constructed more than 4,600,000 square feet of industrial space in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Georgia and continues to actively seek acquisitions of existing buildings or land to develop. Woodmont also owns and manages office buildings, retail space, hotels and four private recreational/golf and tennis clubs in New Jersey and Snowmass, Colorado. In its continuing pursuit of new market opportunities, Woodmont recently entered the senior housing sector with plans to develop super luxury housing in the sectors of Active Adult, Independent Living, Assisted Living and Memory Care in New Jersey. Mr. Witmondt has been recognized by NJBIZ’s Power 50 ranking each year since 2010 and was recently honored as one of the top executives of the year.

Mr. Altman is an entrepreneur and real estate investor with experience in identifying, buying and selling real estate. As a founder and Managing Member of KABR, he is instrumental in fundraising, structuring JV partnerships, sourcing and acquiring real property and debt. To date, Adam has participated in transactions totaling approximately four million square feet of commercial properties, as well as thousands of residential units, hotels and new development land with over 3000 units of entitlements. Prior to joining KABR, he focused on acquisition, development, management and disposition of real estate for a multi-billion dollar healthcare company.

Jose is a senior managing director and co-office head in the New Jersey office of JLL Capital Markets, Americas. He joins JLL as part of the HFF acquisition and is a member of the firm’s leadership committee. Jose specializes in investment advisory throughout New Jersey, New York and Connecticut and also oversees the day-to-day operations of the firm’s New Jersey office. During the course of his more than 25-year commercial real estate career, he’s been involved in more than $62 billion of office, industrial, retail, multifamily and land sales. Jose started at HFF in March 2010. Before that, he was the executive director of Cushman & Wakefield’s New York area investment sales group where he spent more than 17 years. He began his real estate career as a real estate analyst at PaineWebber, UBS, Inc.

Stan Danzig has been with Cushman & Wakefield’s East Rutherford, NJ office since 1981. He leads a seven-person team, focusing on industrial leasing and sales, significant land tract transactions and national/global corporate representation. His experience covers a broad spectrum of activity that includes the acquisition of existing or build-to-suit facilities; disposition of surplus properties; representation of major developers and institutional owners; as well as consulting, management and appraisal assignments on a national and international basis. Stan has consistently been one of Cushman & Wakefield’s leading industrial brokers. Stan has acted on behalf of numerous prestigious clients, including Mercedes-Benz, Prologis, Prudential, Rockefeller Group, Western Union, Tyler Distribution, Crate&Barrel, Colgate, and numerous others. He has led complex acquisition transactions as well as dispositions structured as sales; sale/leasebacks; traditional, synthetic and bonded leases; joint ventures and ground leases.