Once defined by sprawling parking lots and isolated office buildings, suburban corporate campuses are undergoing a dramatic reinvention. Shane Connell, CEO of The Connell Company, is leading that charge in Berkeley Heights, N.J., transforming his family’s 185-acre site, once a traditional office park, into a dynamic, mixed-use destination. In the face of shifting market conditions and rising office vacancies, Connell saw an opportunity not just to adapt, but to set a new standard for suburban redevelopment.
As a fourth-generation leader of the nearly 100-year-old, family-owned company, Connell has overseen a bold repositioning of The Park that blends workspaces, hospitality, wellness and community. Through strategic rezoning and $100 million in capital improvements, The Connell Company has not only retained major tenants like L’Oreal and HP, but achieved a remarkable 97% occupancy rate. In the following Q&A, Connell shares how embracing change and anticipating demand is helping redefine the future of commercial real estate.
Share the story of your family-owned company and how it’s grown over the years.
The Connell Company was founded in 1926 by Grover Cleveland Connell, originally as Connell Rice & Commission Co. After previously working for a Texas rice mill, he started this business trading and brokering a wide range of commodities and produce to retailers and wholesalers with its largest concentration on rice. When his son, Grover Connell Jr. took over the company in 1950, he expanded the business to become the largest non-government rice trader in the world.
Building on that success, the company diversified into new sectors, including finance, equipment leasing, real estate and development and hospitality. Most notably, we acquired and in 1981 began developing The Park, a 185-acre campus in Berkeley Heights.
Having started as a traditional corporate park, known as Connell Corporate Park, the campus currently undergoing a $500 million redevelopment to become a mixed used destination neighborhood that seamlessly integrates work, living and leisure.
What are some of the current challenges of the real estate development sector and how are you handling them?
One of the biggest challenges we have faced in the real estate development sector has been evolving to the shifting market. In 2015, we noticed a shift in the office market and began analyzing the metrics of New Jersey as a whole. We saw an increase in office vacancies and many of New Jersey’s most prominent developers of commercial office shedding and repositioning their assets within the state.
At that time, we weighed our options to assess if we should sell our office assets or rezone and reposition them to evolve alongside the changing market. Part of this process was assessing the trends and determining if our site had a demographic that would be successful after repositioning.
Not only did we rezone the whole campus for additional uses, in 2020, we began renovating and rehabbing each office building to create 1.5 million square feet of modernized and elevated workspaces, including indoor and outdoor spaces with collaborative lounges, workstations, meeting rooms and high-quality bars and cafes.
Each building, under the newly rebranded name Round Table Workspaces, now features game rooms, access to Fieldhouse, the campus’s fitness center, and access to Table & Banter’s hospitality team, which provides homemade and seasonal food, social activities and catering and event services for all tenants. This renovation also included adding a dedicated co-working membership club, Round Table Studios, as a work solution for individuals and smaller companies.
Due to this $100 million capital improvement plan, we were able to secure more than 700,000 square feet of long-term leases over the last few years with recognizable names including L’Oreal, Fiserv and HP. With many owners and landlords throughout New Jersey and across the country struggling with office vacancies, our occupancy has remained very strong and The Park currently 97 percent leased.
The key to this success has been not only staying on top of the latest trends, but also anticipating future demand. For us, this meant building something that could stand the test of time and creating a walkable destination where people want to spend their time.
As a reflection of that, The Park as a whole continues to evolve as The Connell Company is in the middle of developing The District at The Park, which will include 328 apartments and 185,000 square feet of restaurants and entertainment retail, bringing the whole campus together into one vibrant destination.
What’s next for The Connell Company?
The Connell Company has always focused on building for the future. As we approach our 100-year anniversary, we’re continuing that legacy with a new chapter in development and hospitality.
A major focus is the ongoing redevelopment of The Park, where we’re creating spaces that are not only thoughtfully designed but also reflect how people live, work, and connect today. Our goal is to deliver environments that strengthen the community now while setting the stage for long-term usage and innovation.
