Outdated suburban office parks back in vogue?
It’s obvious that the announcement that Fiserv is expanding its New Jersey presence with a 3,000-employee hub in Berkeley Heights was great for the state’s overall economy and its tech scene.
Its bigger impact could be this: The move could signal a revitalization of the state’s enormous suburban office park market.
Trying to find new uses for the state’s believed-to-be obsolete corporate parks has been a goal for some time, one many had thought was out of date. After all, who figured Berkeley Heights — not Jersey City, Newark or even the Princeton/Route 1 corridor — would be the destination for high-tech Fortune 500 company?
Fiserv, that’s who.
“When we looked at our population of people that weren’t in New York City, Berkeley Heights was an almost a perfect center pin drop for those people we already had,” Fiserv Chief Operating Officer Guy Chiarello said.
Fiserv, Chiarello said, has long favored suburban locations. The company — get this — feels it adds to its ability to attract and retain workers. And Chiarello isn’t hesitant to say that feeling only has grown since COVID-19 took over the world.