Demolition of the 126,520-square-foot Wayne office building is underway, and the site is being cleared for 275 rental apartments.
The replacement has received conditional approval. The proposal calls for demolishing the office building and its parking and putting up four apartment buildings. The inclusionary project is planned for a 10.95-acre site along the southbound side of Valley Road.
What The Board Signed Off On
The plan calls for 275 apartments, including 42 affordable units. The affordable homes represent a 15% set-aside tied to a settlement agreement.
Those 42 apartments are the project's affordable set-aside. The housing itself had already been in planning for six years by the time the wrecking equipment showed up.
The approval also covers a large parking field: 482 surface spaces, 20 of them inside detached garages, plus a maintenance building. Against 275 apartments, that is a little under 1.8 spaces per home, garages included.
This is a teardown, not a reuse of the old frame. The project calls for demolishing the existing office building and the parking that served it.
A Fine
Vergano has since called the demolition a "good thing." He said 173 violations were partly caused by faulty smoke detectors that sent the fire department out repeatedly, including multiple false alarms last Christmas.
The penalty attached to that chapter was not a warning letter. Officials fined the current owner and its agents $865,000 for daily state fire-code violations. The Township Council later passed a resolution to reduce the fine to $350,000, with stipulations. That is a $515,000 cut on paper, still tied to conditions the resolution itself attached.
The empty-feeling interior had already picked up an unofficial audience. Vergano said the cavernous building drew TikTok creators and urban explorers. A structure large enough to generate Christmas false alarms was also large enough to become content. The mayor's preferred sequel is the one now underway on Valley Road.
Approved, But Not Yet Sold
Demolition is moving ahead as the site is cleared for the proposed apartments.
The Valley Road proposal calls for 275 apartments in four buildings. It would add a substantial residential project to the township.
A separate 473-unit AvalonBay development is at the former Valley National Bank headquarters.
Wayne's Other Apartment Numbers
A separate proposed development is planned on university-owned property.
The proposal on university-owned property is a different site from the 275-unit Valley Road development, which has received conditional approval. The Valley Road plan calls for four buildings, including 42 affordable apartments within the development.
The office being removed is 126,520 square feet on a 10.95-acre site along the southbound side of Valley Road. The residential proposal places affordable homes within the same four-building development.
A Smaller Piece Of A Larger Exit
Wayne's project belongs to the office-to-housing shift only in the broad sense. The building is being razed. It is not being converted in place.
Nearly 10 million square feet of office space had already been removed from Northern and Central New Jersey over the five years before July 2026, by demolition or conversion, NJ.com reported. About 2 million square feet of New Jersey office inventory was removed in 2026 as of that July count, the highest level since 2022. Over the 10 years preceding July 2026, nearly half of the office space that was redeveloped became housing.
A separate count, current as of August 2025, found 141 identified office-conversion projects statewide that were completed, under construction, or proposed, RE-NJ reported. One hundred nine were finished or underway, and 32 were proposed. The pipeline represented about 22.1 million square feet, or 9.6% of New Jersey's office inventory. Residential conversions made up 49% of the tracked projects. Industrial conversions accounted for about 30%.
The comparable projects are not boutique. In West Orange, a 400,000-square-foot office campus became Stonehill at West Orange, a 423-unit community. Newark's former 20-story New Jersey Bell Telephone Company headquarters was turned into 264 market-rate and affordable apartments. JLL expects redevelopment to stay concentrated in the Lower 287 corridor, Parsippany, and the Route 78 submarkets.
Valley Road is the more immediate picture. A 10.95-acre office site is being cleared for four buildings and 275 apartments, 42 of them affordable, as the project moves forward after conditional approval.
