Another Shoe Drops The last thing Northern New Jersey needs is another vacant suburban corporate campus. Another hole will be opening up this summer, though, as the Toys “R” Us complex in Wayne is poised to shut down. The company will leave behind a sprawling complex with multiple buildings totaling more than 900,000 s/f located on a secluded 200-acre lakefront site. Northern New Jersey can make a legitimate claim to being the starting point of the corporate campus – AT&T Bell Labs opened its first campus in 1942. It took a while for the concept to take off, but construction peaked in the 1980s. Just under 98 msf of Northern New Jersey’s office stock was constructed in the 1980s, nearly the same amount as currently exists in Lower Manhattan. The current availability rate for this core part of the market is well over 20%. The struggles of the suburban office campus can be attributed to many different things: millennials prefer more dynamic urban centers, technological advancement the reduced need for clerical workers, the shift to online sales has thinned the ranks of call center employees. High housing costs and taxes, particularly compared to Sunbelt states, may have given companies and households added cause to move elsewhere.