HRT -Hormone Replacement Therapy in Rockleigh, NJ.

Big Sky Medical has acquired the Spectra Labs building, a 204,500-square-foot office/life science facility in Rockleigh, N.J. The investment manager purchased the asset, which is fully leased to Spectra Laboratories, from Spruce Healthcare Group for an undisclosed amount.

A CBRE U.S. Healthcare and Life Sciences Capital Markets team comprising Lee Asher, Jordan Selbiger, Cole Reethof, Josiah Gunter, Zack Holderman, Jeremy Neuer and Jeffrey Dunne served as the exclusive advisor to the seller, and it was a déjà vu experience for some involved. A few of the CBRE team members had represented Marcus Partners when it sold Spectra Labs to Charter Realty Group, a related entity of Spruce Healthcare Group, for $40 million in a 1031 exchange in 2016.

Located on nearly 7 acres at the midpoint of the Boston-to-Washington, D.C., corridor, Spectra Labs sits about 25 miles from New York City in Bergen County, N.J. The two-story building welcomed its first tenant in 1977 but has since evolved into a modern mixed-use office destination featuring 54 percent state-of-the-art lab space. In 2015, the property benefited from a two-year, $49.7 million redevelopment that increased its size to accommodate the 15-year lease expansion that Spectra Laboratories had signed in 2013.

CBRE didn’t comment on the investor competition for the asset; however, the life science sector in New Jersey is hot property due to robust demand among tenants. “New Jersey’s life science market has seen rapid growth from emerging pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies,” according to a first quarter 2022 report by Colliers. “The market for move-in-ready lab space remains tight amid the growth of small and mid-sized life science firms during the year. Despite the lack of available laboratory space in the market, the construction market has been somewhat limited by the lengthy approval process and the high cost of construction.”

Two years and counting

Big Sky launched in 2020 and has since made quite a splash. Most recently, the Dallas-based investment manager turned heads in the industry with the April 2022 announcement of the formation of a $1 billion joint venture with an off-shore institutional investor for the purpose of acquiring medical office buildings and surgery centers across the U.S. Big Sky seeded the new investment vehicle with a $400 million MOB portfolio that it had amassed over a 12-month period.

Among Big Sky’s transactions since the joint venture news emerged is the closing of the purchase of a 111,800-square-foot medical office portfolio in suburban Milwaukee and Green Bay, Wis. The company acquired the four-building collection of MOBs from Stage Equity Partners, having emerged victorious in a highly competitive process.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

MEDIA CONTACT:

Derek Alan Sands

[email protected], 201.250.6080

Golfers welcome to tee-off at one of the County’s six public courses

(HACKENSACK, N.J.) – Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco and the Board of Commissioners are pleased to announce the start of the 2022 Golf Season at all Bergen County-owned public golf courses. The Bergen County Parks System boasts six, expansive golf courses, each with their own characteristics and challenges, from Darlington Golf Course’s rolling hills to Soldier Hill Golf Course’s length and well-bunkered greens. Hundreds of thousands of golfers enjoy Bergen County’s varied courses. In 2021 alone, Bergen County’s six public courses welcomed 266,000 golfers of all skill and abilities.

Bergen County Golf Courses

Darlington Golf Course, 279 Campgaw Rd, Mahwah, NJ

Orchard Hills Golf Course, 404 Paramus Rd, Paramus, NJ

Overpeck Golf Course, 275 E. Cedar Ln, Teaneck, NJ

Rockleigh Golf Course, 15 Paris Ave, Rockleigh, NJ

Soldier Hill Golf Course, 99 Palisade Ave, Emerson, NJ

Valley Brook Golf Course, 15 Rivervale Rd, River Vale, NJ

Registered Membership (yearly fee)

$50 – Adult Resident (age 18- 61)

$25 – Junior Resident (age up to 17)

$25 – Senior Resident (age 62+)

$60 – Non-County Residents (all ages)

18 Hole Pricing

Not Registered (all ages)

Weekday – $50

Weekday Twilight – $35

Weekend – $60

Weekend Twilight – $40

Registered Adult (Bergen County Resident)

Weekday – $30

Weekday Twilight – $22

Weekend – $35

Weekend Twilight – $27

Registered Senior/Junior (Bergen County Resident)

Weekday – $22

Weekday Twilight – $16

Weekend – $32

Weekend Twilight – $23

Registered (Non-County Residents)

Weekday – $37

Weekday Twilight – $30

Weekend – $42

Weekend Twilight – $35

9 Hole Pricing (only available at Orchard Hills)

Not Registered (all ages)

Weekday – $35

Weekend – $40

Registered Adult (Bergen County Resident)

Weekday – $22

Weekend – $27

Registered Senior/Junior (Bergen County Resident)

Weekday – $16

Weekend – $23

Registered (Non-County Residents)

Weekday – $30

Weekend – $35

A membership includes early access to tee time reservations and discounted greens fees. For full price list, visit www.golfbergencounty.com. The Golf Main Office can be reached at 201-336-7259.

Bergen County Golf is dedicated to providing an enjoyable golf experience through well-maintained golf courses, reasonably paced rounds, and friendly customer service.

A state appeals court on Monday ruled that six New Jersey businesses that say they were damaged by coronavirus restrictions in the early months of the pandemic can't force their insurers to cover the losses.

While acknowledging the "overwhelming" harm some establishments faced, a three-judge panel found that the language of so-called "business interruption policies" covered physical damage and specifically left out viral outbreaks.

“We recognize that COVID-19 has caused overwhelming economic losses to untold businesses and individuals dependent on those businesses in our state, nation, and the world,” Superior Court Judge Thomas Sumners Jr. wrote in a 54-page brief.

Nevertheless, he added, "plaintiffs' insurance claims are restricted by the clear and plain meaning of their insurance policies, which we cannot rewrite to cover their unfortunate losses.”

The judges dismissed the businesses' lawsuits.

More than 2,300 such suits have been filed in the last two years across the nation — including almost 150 of them in New Jersey, according to a litigation tracker from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. But many state and federal courts have thrown them out, the school said.

In New Jersey, plaintiffs including the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Rockleigh Country Club in Bergen County and Jenkinson’s Boardwalk, the popular Jersey Shore amusement pier, have all claimed their insurance companies stiffed them by failing to honor coverage despite the hefty premiums they paid.

Monday’s decision stemmed from suits brought by six New Jersey businesses whose cases were merged into one appeal. The plaintiffs included:

Attorneys for the businesses couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

As the pandemic emerged in March 2020, Gov. Phil Murphy ordered sweeping closures of businesses deemed non-essential, as well as onerous limits on essential businesses such as grocery stores.

Restaurants, hair salons and gyms were shuttered for months and then operated for the next year at reduced capacity and with other health restrictions.

Prior coverage: NJ businesses want coverage for millions in COVID losses. Insurers say read the fine print

Some establishments sought to make use of business-interruption insurance, policies that typically cover closures due a fire or other emergency. But insurers have denied those claims, arguing they were never intended to cover a global pandemic. Language in the policies requires "direct physical damage" to trigger coverage, they said.

In New Jersey and elsewhere, the businesses sued, saying their damages were akin to natural disasters like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina.

But Sumners, in agreeing with a lower court decision, noted that past disasters such as Katrina and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks weren't covered by business-interruption insurance.

In those cases, Sumners said, issuers didn't have to pay out because the plaintiffs couldn’t show that their closures were a direct result of their respective natural disasters.

For subscribers:NJ restaurants say robot waiters are here to stay. Here's how dining out will change

Executive orders like those signed by Murphy at the onset of the pandemic aren't covered by the policies, he added. And most insurers specifically exempt the impacts of viral epidemics, an exclusion that became popular after the SARS outbreak of 2002.

In 2020, the industry’s Insurance Information Institute reported that U.S insurers would owe roughly $750 billion if every business were paid for interruption losses due to the pandemic.

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

Pearl River, NY - September 23, 2022 – Rockland Electric Company is urging customers to take action now that can help them manage costs this winter as market supply prices for electricity and natural gas are expected to be higher than last winter.

Though summer is still winding down, Rockland Electric Company, recognizing the hardship high bills can impose, is letting customers know what they can expect for electric costs in the winter of 2022-23 and steps they can take to soften the impact.

The company offers Tips for Lowering Your Energy Bill and a number of Payment Plans and Assistance www.oru.com/njbillhelp, including Budget Billing, which smooths customer’s costs out throughout the year. The company encourages customers to check out its energy efficiency incentives for upgrades customers make to their homes. Rebates, Incentives, and Tax Credits

Utility companies and customers across the Northeast are facing similar circumstances. The increases in customers’ bills are mainly due to increases in the market supply cost of natural gas, which is volatile and also influences electric market costs.

Rockland Electric Company purchases electricity for its customers for the majority of its load through an annual Basic Generation Service (BGS) auction. This is the mechanism that the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJBPU) requires all of the state’s electric utilities to use to secure the electric supply requirements for their customers. Through the auction, New Jersey’s electric utilities buy a portion of their electric supply over a three-year period --- one auction per year.

Rockland Electric Company does not set supply prices and does not make a profit on the supply.

The auction method this year shielded the prices somewhat from the market’s turbulence. A typical Rockland Electric Company residential customer using 925 kWh per month this winter is expected to see a bill increase of $10.09 from $166.76 to $176.85 or 6.1%.

The best strategy for Rockland Electric Company’s approximately 73,000 NJ energy customers is to carefully manage their usage.

The company offers help for customers who are struggling with their bills. Rockland Electric Company can put customers on Payment Plans and Assistance www.oru.com/njbillhelp, so that they can pay off balances over time, rather than all at once.

Customers who receive benefits from certain government programs may qualify for discounts on their monthly energy bills. Rockland Electric Company offers information on these and other Payment Plans and Assistance www.oru.com/njbillhelp it has available for customers.

Rockland Electric Company is a regulated electric utility that serves 73,000 customers in parts of Bergen, Passaic and Sussex County in New Jersey. Rockland Electric is a wholly owned subsidiary of Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc., which in turn is owned by Consolidated Edison, Inc.

Rockland Electric Company, serves the following communities in New Jersey:

Allendale, Alpine, Closter, Cresskill, Demarest, Franklin Lakes, Harrington Park, Mahwah, Haworth (part), Montague, Montvale, Northvale, Norwood, Oakland, Old Tappan (part), Ramsey, Ringwood, Rivervale (part), Rockleigh, Saddle River (part), Upper Saddle River, Wantage (part), Vernon (part), West Milford (part), Wyckoff (part).

For additional information about Rockland Electric Company, please visit O&R’s Web site at www.oru.com.

Sidney Altman, a Canadian-born researcher who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for a discovery about the cellular function of RNA, which changed scientists’ fundamental understanding of biochemical processes and has had applications to medicine and gene therapy, died April 5 in Rockleigh, N.J. He was 82.

Yale University, where Dr. Altman was a professor for many years, announced his death in a statement, saying he had a long, unspecified illness.

Dr. Altman trained as a physicist before developing an interest in biological sciences and chemistry. He made his key discovery in 1978 when he showed that ribonucleic acid (RNA) — one of the basic molecules present in every living cell — possessed previously unknown properties.

Before Dr. Altman published his study, scientists believed that enzymes — molecules with catalytic properties that promoted chemical reactions — were proteins. The purpose of RNA, it was thought, was to transmit genetic information contained in DNA to the proteins.

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Conducting his research on E. coli bacteria, Dr. Altman showed that RNA did more than simply transfer genetic material within the cells: It could also undergo a transformation that would allow it to perform the functions of an enzyme, engaging in chemical reactions.

At first, few people believed Dr. Altman. But in 1980, Thomas R. Cech, a scientist at the University of Colorado, verified Dr. Altman’s findings in separate and independent experiments. Dr. Altman and Cech were awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1989.

Their research upset the conventional understanding of cellular biology and of how genetic information is transmitted. Dr. Altman and Cech proved conclusively that nucleic acids are the building blocks of life.

The Nobel Academy described their findings as “the two most important and outstanding discoveries in the biological sciences in the past 40 years,” second only to the description of the double-helix structure of DNA in the 1950s by Francis Crick and James D. Watson.

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As it happened, Crick played a significant role in Dr. Altman’s development as a scientist. Struggling to find his footing in physics, Dr. Altman was inspired to study biological sciences at least in part by a scientific paper he read in the 1960s.

“It was a paper on the nature of the genetic code,” Dr. Altman said in a 2000 interview for the Nobel Prize website. “It said that the genetic code is read in groups of three letters from DNA, essentially. And it was a paper from Cambridge, England, and Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner were the senior authors. And I remember thinking to myself, not merely this is again very elegant, beautiful, but thinking to myself, how could they possibly have understood this? How did they find this out?”

Crick had won the Nobel Prize in 1962 for his DNA discovery with Watson, and Brenner later won the Nobel in 2002 for work in genetics. The scientists had a laboratory in Cambridge, where Dr. Altman worked from 1969 to 1971 in a setting he called “scientific heaven.”

It was in Cambridge that Dr. Altman began his work on the genes of transfer RNA (tRNA), a component of RNA. After joining the faculty at Yale in 1972, Dr. Altman continued his work and ultimately, with the help of graduate students, made his major breakthrough.

Sidney Altman was born May 8, 1939, in Montreal. Both of his parents were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His mother had worked in a textile mill, and his father had a grocery store.

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Dr. Altman attended English-language schools and also became fluent in French in Montreal. He had wide-ranging interests, including literature and sports, but was especially fascinated by science. He was curious about how atomic bombs were built — he was 6 when World War II ended — and later read a book about the periodic table of elements.

“For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power,” he wrote in a biographical essay for the Nobel website. “I should mention that while I was growing up, [Albert] Einstein was presented as a worthy role model for a young boy who was good at his studies.”

He planned to attend college in Canada until a friend persuaded him to apply to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was admitted, but his friend was not. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1960, he spent two years as a graduate assistant at Columbia University.

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After taking a summer course in molecular biology, Dr. Altman continued his studies at the University of Colorado, receiving a doctorate in biophysics in 1967. He spent two years as a researcher at Harvard University before his two years in England with Crick and Brenner.

In addition to his scientific research, Dr. Altman became a department chairman in molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale. From 1985 to 1989, he served as dean of Yale College, the university’s undergraduate college. He was named to the position by Yale’s president at the time, A. Bartlett Giamatti, a close friend.

Dr. Altman, who was widely read in many fields, helped shape Yale’s undergraduate curriculum, expanding course offerings in science and languages.

“As someone who was himself a great reader and a beautiful writer, and widely knowledgeable,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a statement, “he believed non-scientists should have an understanding of science, and that scientists would benefit by having a richer understanding of the humanities, arts, and social sciences.”

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Dr. Altman also had a strong interest in Jewish cultural matters and helped found a Judaic studies program at Yale. He became a U.S. citizen in the 1980s while retaining his Canadian citizenship.

His marriage to Ann Korner ended in divorce. Survivors include two children and four grandchildren.

Long after receiving his Nobel Prize, Dr. Altman continued to do research based on his earlier RNA studies, including efforts to find gene-based treatments for malaria and other diseases.

Asked to give advice to students by a Nobel website interviewer, Dr. Altman emphasized the importance of believing in oneself and a willingness to work hard.

“It could be a letter carrier, it could be a sales manager in a store or a university professor,” he said. “All the people who do well work very hard. Nobody who has a record of achievement has been lazy about it.”