HANOVER, NJ — With the steel topped off at MetLife Investments’ global headquarters in Hanover, Vision Real Estate Partners and Rubenstein Partners are on schedule for the 185,000 s/f build-to-suit at 67 Whippany Rd. The partnership broke ground in April on the sustainable, class A office facility. Situated on 14 acres, the new global headquarters for the investments business of MetLife, Inc., the largest U.S. life insurer, has been designed to LEED Gold Core and Shell and LEED Platinum Interiors standards. It will feature an open floor plan with collaborative workspaces and breakout rooms, a town hall with technologically advanced conference facilities, a fitness center, employee food court with indoor and outdoor seating, and café. The property will offer approximately 4.5 parking spaces per 1,000 feet of rentable area, through a combination of surface, structured and under building executive parking. “Construction is progressing quite nicely,” said Vision Real Estate Partners’ Ross Chomik, managing partner. The building, which will house more than 900 MetLife employees, will be delivered in third quarter 2016.
The MetLife building anchors 67 Whippany Rd.’s 100-acre South Campus component. The 94-acre balance houses Bayer Healthcare’s 675,000 s/f East Coast headquarters. The Vision Real Estate Partners/Rubenstein Partners joint venture sold that parcel to Bayer and custom-built the pharmaceutical leader’s LEED-certified facility, which includes approved expansion for up to 200,000 square feet. Together, these projects total nearly 1.1 million square feet in approved corporate space, effectively replacing the 1.4 million s/f of obsolete Alcatel-Lucent offices existing when the partnership acquired the campus in 2010. “Both the MetLife and Bayer facilities are crafted to meet the new generation of workforce standards,” said Vision Real Estate Partners’ Sam Morreale, founder and managing partner. “They reflect a commitment by major corporate employers to provide world-class, fully amenitized environments for their people. For us, working with such forward-thinking organizations in partnership with Rubenstein is extremely gratifying.”