Prescription For Growth
By JAMES QUIRK
STAFF WRITER - The Record

Employees of Barr Pharmaceuticals will be reporting for work at this building at 225 Summit Ave. in Montvale after the drug maker moves its executive offices from Woodcliff Lake.

Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc., the generic drug maker, will soon be moving its executive offices from Woodcliff Lake to a 142,500-square-foot office building in Montvale that once was the corporate headquarters of Toys "R" Us Inc.

Barr will sublease its Woodcliff Lake facility and move the 250 employees into the Montvale office, which is 60 percent larger than its current executive facility, according to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Starting in August, Barr will lease the 37-acre property, located at 225 Summit Ave., for 10½ years at $320,625 a month for the first five years, and $356,250 a month thereafter.

A prime factor behind Barr's decision to lease in Montvale was the company's $2.5 billion acquisition last year of Pliva d.d., the largest pharmaceutical company in Eastern Europe, said Carol Cox, senior vice president of global investor relations and corporate communications at Barr. Pliva is based in Zagreb, Croatia.

"Since moving into the Woodcliff Lake building four years ago, the expansion of our generic and proprietary operations in the United States has resulted in Barr rapidly outgrowing the available space," said Cox. "In fact, we even had to lease additional office space in proximity to the Woodcliff Lake building to support our staffing needs."

Montvale Mayor George Zeller described Barr's decision to lease the entire building as "a major coup" for the borough, However, finding a new tenant for 225 Summit Ave. was not an overnight process.

Seven years ago, Toys "R" Us waded through an expansion application before the Montvale Planning Board on its former building that met with bitter opposition from residents. The application dragged on for more than 18 months before Toys "R" Us won approval to expand its facility by 200,000 square feet. However, the company's bid to build a 9-acre parking garage was denied, and Toys "R" Us ultimately walked away from the facility, moving its headquarters to Wayne.

Montvale-based real estate investors Ivy Equities, along with joint venture partner Paragon, saw an opportunity with the departure of Toys "R" Us, and acquired the property in 2004. Starting in late 2005, the companies "took the building down to the steel" as part of a massive renovation effort, said Anthony DiTommaso, chief executive officer of Ivy Equities, in a telephone interview. "The building was an outdated eyesore that was occupying prime position in a very desirable town."

"It was built in the '60s," said Mark Schaevitz, principal of Paragon. "It was probably a good building in its day, but those days passed a long time ago."

Neither Schaevitz nor DiTomasso would disclose how much it cost to transform the former Toys "R" Us facility into Class A office space. The building has a 22,000-square-foot operations data center and a new full-service cafeteria. But both men said it was a risk worth taking. The renovation took 14 months to complete; Barr started to express interest before the work ended, DiTomasso said.

Barr, whose corporate headquarters are in Pomona, N.Y., has seven other facilities in New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Besides its executive offices in Woodcliff Lake, the company operates a manufacturing facility in Northvale.

In the last three years, Barr has poured $183 million into capital expenditures, primarily to increase production and distribution capacity, according to its Web site.

Barr's new facility will become one of Montvale's largest ratables, though the exact amount the company will pay won't be know for at least another week, Zeller said.

The borough is home to paint company Benjamin Moore & Co., the North American headquarters of German luxury automobile maker Mercedes-Benz and the executive offices of audit and accounting firm KPMG.