MONTCLAIR, N.J. — Six years ago, when a corporate restructuring abruptly put Robert H. Silver out of his job as the president and chief operating officer at UBS Financial Services, he also lost his handsome New York office, of course. So Mr. Silver went home.
Home then, as now, was this township of 37,000 people about 15 miles west of Manhattan. But when Mr. Silver started looking for a new business office in his home town, he could find nothing suitable, he said.
“This is a terrific place to live, full of creative people who do great work,” Mr. Silver said, “but at that time, it really didn’t have decent professional office space.”
He decided to attack the problem by becoming a developer, buying a rundown auto parts shop and joining forces with a local architect and a general contractor to transform it into an office building.