BMW is selling off 20 acres of its North American headquarters, which is in Woodcliff Lake, NorthJersey.com has learned, though it’s unclear what would go there.

The planned sale was confirmed by BMW spokesperson Phil Dilanni.

Dilanni said BMW is consolidating operations at its U.S. headquarters from four buildings into three at the Woodcliff Lake campus toward the end of 2025, but not reducing its employee head count. BMW’s headquarters in the borough spans roughly 86 acres, said Mayor Carlos Rendo.

“We are an organization driven by continuous innovation that works to anticipate the future needs of our people, which is why we are designing a new working environment, and workspaces that put a focus on flexibility, comfort, collaboration, and safety,” Dilanni said in an email.

The BMW spokesperson assured that “neither the scale of our operations, nor the size of our workforce are being impacted.”

BMW is looking to sell the land at the north end of the corporate campus near Glen Road, reported Pascack Press.

As for what’s going there, Rendo said the optimal replacement would be another corporate entity.

“They’re marketing the building out there for sale, to another HQ type of company, or they’ll sublet it," said Glenn Dulmage, senior vice president at Lodi-based MRH Real Estate. "But it’s really designed as a single-tenant type of building. Nobody’s stepping up for that.”

Corporate office space flips mixed-use residential

Reduced office footprints in the post-COVID era are nothing new. Sanofi and Deloitte are taking that route, moving into much smaller spaces at M Station in Morristown.

Typically, suburban office buildings sell for the land they’re built on, said Jeffrey Otteau, managing partner and chief economist for the Otteau Group, a real estate consultant in Old Bridge.

“Meaning the sticks and bricks, the glass and steel, make no contribution to what someone pays for that, because this is a very challenged segment of the industry and they’re getting torn down everywhere,” he said.

The Woodcliff Lake mayor acknowledged that a more likely route would be additional housing.

That has been the case with many former corporate campuses across New Jersey suburbs, from the former Toys R Us headquarters in Wayne to the former GAF headquarters in Morris County and the former Mercedes-Benz campus in Montvale.

“Everyone’s looking for ways to monetize these corporate campuses and do things to ultimately create mixed-use environments,” said Peter Bronsnick, an executive with the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, based in East Rutherford.

“Mixed-use developments” are buildings that entail a “combination of housing, office, retail, medical, recreational, commercial or industrial components,” according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

New Jersey’s suburbs have become ripe for this kind of redevelopment. They’ve been saturated with office parks stretching back to the 1980s, during an office-building boom, said James Hughes, a professor of urban planning and policy development at Rutgers University.

Many of those fell out of vogue even before the pandemic, Hughes said, as younger talent flocked to urban centers.

The mayor said there could be some controls on housing — such as limiting it to one- and two bedroom — so as not to inundate local schools and such public services as the police and fire departments.

Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record. 

Email: munozd@northjersey.com; Twitter:@danielmunoz100 and Facebook

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: BMW plans to sell off 20 acres of its North Jersey corporate HQ