Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, has been in on a buying spree on the East Coast as seeks to build a $10 billion U.S. real estate portfolio by 2018. In June, Oxford agreed to buy the 174,000-square-foot 745 Atlantic Ave. office building from Beacon Capital Partners for $114.5 million. Last year it acquired 125 Summer St., 225 Franklin St. and 60 State St. in downtown Boston and One Memorial Drive in Cambridge from Blackstone’s Equity Office.
The price of the 25-story Back Bay tower works out to $1,000 per square foot. Back Bay remains the city’s highest-rent district for class A office space, with asking rents averaging $61.03 per square foot in the second quarter, according to a JLL research report. That compares with $59.30 in the Seaport and $56.36 in the Financial District. Asking rents are even higher in East Cambridge, with class A office space averaging $69.37.
Blackstone’s Equity Office, the current owner of 500 Boylston St., is in permitting to add 80,000 square feet of retail and office space to the courtyard in front of the 1.3-million-square-foot tower designed by Philip Johnson. It also seeks to convert 8,350 square feet of second-floor office space into a restaurant.
Major office tenants of the complex include Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which will move to 125 High St. in 2017, and law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which leased 47,000 square feet in 2013.
