Photo courtesy of CBRE
The retail and multifamily buildings in Watertown’s Arsenal Yards hit the market this week, in what could become one of the biggest real estate deals in years.
CBRE brokers Nat Heald, Chris Decouflé and Jordana Roet represent ownership in the retail portion of the development. CBRE’s Biria St. John and Simon Butler represent the property’s multifamily assets.
Local news site Watertown News first reported the offering.
Boylston Properties and The Wilder Companies redeveloped Arsenal Yards from the husk of the old Arsenal Mall, replacing the newer indoor mall portions of the property with three lab buildings, a theater, parking garages, a hotel, a Brothers Market high-end grocery store, and additional retail in historic brick warehouses and factories that formerly housed part of the U.S. Army’s Watertown Arsenal. The site is filled out by 302 apartments across three co-branded buildings, where advertised rents for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment run between $4,588 and $5,579 per month.
The location sits at the center of a dense trade area: Arsenal Yards itself has 430,000 square feet of on-site biotech space and Watertown’s life science submarket in general outperforms others in Boston’s suburbs, according to brokerage JLL’s research, and attracts a large number of affluent residents nearby in Newton, Belmont, Watertown and further west along the nearby Mass. Pike, plus the many students across the Charles River in Allston-Brighton.
It’s located across the street from the Target-anchored Watertown Mall, now owned by National Development and confirmed for long-term retail use after major life science REIT Alexandria Real Estate Equities abandoned plans for a biotech “megacampus” there.
The net effect: The 257,379 square feet retail on site drew 4.8 million customers in the last 12 months, the CBRE listing states.
But it doesn’t appear that Boylston Properties or Wilder is offering all of the development for sale. The listing doesn’t include any of the site’s three biotech buildings, nor the 150-room Hampton Inn. Boylston Properties bought the adjoining Home Depot location for $96 million in 2022; Home Depot bought the property back in 2025 for $72 million, property records show.
The listing is offered unpriced, and there’s very little available data to suggest how much it might eventually fetch. Large, mixed-use retail destinations in Boston’s suburbs are few and far between, and all are held by their original developers or long-term owners. The only exception might be Nuveen Real Estate’s $350 million sale of its 50 percent stake in Dedham’s 580,000-square-foot property Legacy Place lifestyle center in 2025.
