Daewoo Engineering & Construction re-enters US real estate market after 20 years with New Jersey residential project

Daewoo Engineering & Construction is making a full-scale push into the US real estate development market, accelerating its transformation into a global developer. The company is returning to the North American real estate market for the first time in about 20 years, drawing on its domestic housing supply capabilities and overseas new town development experience — including the Starlake City project in Vietnam.

Daewoo Engineering & Construction announced Friday that it decided June 30 to invest in the Palisades Park residential development project in Bergen County, New Jersey.

The total project cost is estimated at approximately $291 million. The development will include an 18-story, 540-unit apartment complex along with parking and neighborhood commercial facilities.

The site is about a 30-minute drive from Midtown Manhattan and within roughly 20 minutes of both Newark Liberty International Airport and LaGuardia Airport. It also sits adjacent to one of the largest Korean American communities in the United States, in New Jersey's Koreatown. The project is expected to draw strong interest from professionals who commute to Manhattan, newlyweds and residents who prefer proximity to the Korean American community.

For this project, Daewoo Engineering & Construction's US investment arm, DUSAI (Daewoo USA Investment), will participate as a co-general partner alongside New York-based real estate developer Tamares.

The two companies plan to finalize a joint venture agreement and complete land acquisition by the end of July, then proceed through remaining permits and investor recruitment before breaking ground in 2028. Construction is expected to take about 32 months, with completion and operations slated for 2031, after which the property will be sold.

This marks Daewoo Engineering & Construction's return to the US real estate market after roughly two decades. The company first entered the market in 1988 with a senior housing project in Seattle, and went on to develop residential projects in Texas, New York and other locations through the mid-2000s — including the Trump World Tower project in Manhattan in 1997. It laid the groundwork for its North American comeback in 2023 by establishing a local subsidiary in New York.

In September, Chairman Jeong Won-ju visited the Prosper area near Dallas, Texas, where he signed a memorandum of understanding with local developer Orion RE Capital for cooperation on a mixed-use development project, part of the company's sustained effort to re-enter the US real estate market.

Daewoo Engineering & Construction has built a strong domestic track record in housing supply and construction under its Prugio and Summit brands, while demonstrating overseas real estate development capabilities through new town projects such as Starlake City in Hanoi, Vietnam. Starlake City — a flagship overseas mixed-use urban development in which the company handled planning, development, pre-sales and operations — is widely regarded as a benchmark for Korean construction companies operating as overseas developers.

That development expertise also worked in the company's favor during the bidding process for the New Jersey project. According to local sources, calls for Daewoo Engineering & Construction's involvement had been consistently raised within the New Jersey Korean American community.

The company plans to use this project as a springboard to build investment and development capabilities as a project developer — rather than simply participating in overseas work as a contractor — and to establish a stable development platform in the North American real estate market. The New York–New Jersey corridor and Texas are seen as high-potential markets for expanding development activity through partnerships with local firms, given their robust rental housing demand and mature real estate finance markets.

In particular, the company plans to move forward in earnest with the Prosper mixed-use development project in Texas in the second half of this year. Prosper is an emerging affluent community home to some of the top-rated public schools in the United States, with a median household income of around $190,000 a year. The Prosper project is expected to feature luxury residences, premium homes, a hotel and office space targeting upper-income buyers.

"The Palisades Park residential development project is our first step in bringing the housing competitiveness we have built domestically and our overseas real estate development capabilities into the US market," a Daewoo Engineering & Construction official said. "We will continue to expand our development business through strategic partnerships with top local partners in the United States and other major overseas real estate markets, and secure new growth engines as a global developer."

Meanwhile, Daewoo Engineering & Construction is also seeing growing expectations for overseas work on the back of an expanding nuclear power plant market and the prospect of a Middle East war winding down. The company merged its overseas business division and nuclear power division into a newly established Global Infrastructure headquarters to pursue participation in the global nuclear power value chain. It has also recently formed a Middle East Reconstruction Task Force to respond to reconstruction demand in the region.