Nutley Apartments Sell For $19M; Revamped Ex-Roche Site Aids Sale – Belleville, NJ Patch

NUTLEY, NJ — An apartment building on River Road in Nutley recently sold for $19 million, according to a Livingston-based firm.

On Tuesday, Gebroe-Hammer Associates (GHA) announced that it arranged the off-market sale of West Bank Apartments in Nutley to River Gardens NJ, LLC.

Located at 181 River Road in the township’s River Road/Park Avenue section, West Bank Apartments runs parallel to Route 21. The seller and original developer, Westbank Apartments, LLC/Avalon Apartment, LLC, built the 108-unit midrise in 1962.

“An active client of mine contacted me specifically about their interest in purchasing West Bank Apartments, which was not and has never been on the market,” said Niko Nicolaou, executive vice president at GHA.

“Because of [GHA President Ken Uranowitz’s] 40-plus year close relationship with the owner, we were able to successfully bring the parties together from offer to closing in less than four months,” Nicolaou said. “Considering all the logistics, including but not limited to inspections by lenders and the municipality, such a short time period is unheard of in this COVID-19 environment.”

“While technically located in the East Essex submarket, its boundaries with Bergen County and Passaic County literally render it at one of the most vital crossroads for the North Jersey Metro,” Nicolaou added.

According to Nicolaou, the Nutley-Clifton area has emerged as “an important medical, bio-tech and commercial corridor” in recent years. As a result, the area has been drawing private businesses, healthcare research incubators and world-class medical education institutions that are adding thousands of jobs within a three-mile radius of West Bank Apartments.

“This corridor is undergoing a transformation like no other in the state with the fully leased ON3 mixed-use redevelopment of the former Hoffman-LaRoche site,” Nicolaou said. “It is already having positive rippling effects on the existing multifamily housing stock in the immediate and secondary vicinity where it is feeding a highly educated, upper-income tenant pipeline.”

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