If the stars align, Burlington will be home to a new, 500,000-square-foot headquarters facility for Keurig, the company known for its single-cup coffeemakers, according to commercial real estate executives familiar with the company’s plans.

Keurig is expected to occupy space on South Avenue in a former 82,000-square-foot industrial property owned by the Gutierrez Co. The firm would occupy the existing space and eventually enter into a build-to-suit development plan with the owner.

The site, called Burlington Research Center, is located at 43-63 South Ave. Situated on 16 acres between Route 3 and the Middlesex Turnpike, just north of Route 128, the location offers up to 590,000 square feet of additional potential development.

Keurig’s plan would be to make use of existing buildings and later construct two new buildings for a total complex of about 500,000 square feet, sources said. Keurig has been shopping for a new half-million-square-foot headquarters for several months.

Keurig was also in talks with Nordblom to possibly take space in its Northwest Park, off the Middlesex Turnpike in Burlington. But real estate executives close to that deal told Banker & Tradesman Keurig is no longer chasing Nordblom’s space and are now focused completely on the Gutierrez property. The coffee company also looked at the former Hewlett-Packard campus in Marlborough, but sources said the buildings there are essentially obsolete, and Keurig might be more interested in using existing space and building the rest it needs in phases.

Which is exactly what it looks like the company is planning to do in Burlington.

When another industry expert was asked why Keurig would opt for the Gutierrez land over the others, he said simply, “Location. I think that’s it.”

Sea Change

That location – Burlington – has been cruising along lately in terms of office absorption. The town’s vacancy rate is about 13.6 percent, compared to the 16 percent overall vacancy rate of Route 128 North submarket, according to information from Lincoln Property Co. (LPC). In the past year, the entire 128 North market has experienced a total of 533,000 square feet of positive absorption – more than 60 percent of which, 332,000 square feet, was in Burlington.

If absorption continues at this pace in Burlington, the town will be just 10 percent vacant in the next year, according to information provided by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.

Some of that has been driven by an overflow of tenants from other areas like Cambridge and Woburn, especially when companies that started in those locations “graduate” out of their space and need more room to grow, said LPC Vice President Rob Cronin. One recent example is Dyax Corp.’s move to 55 Network Drive in Nordblom’s Northwest Park from 300 Technology Square in Cambridge – the first biopharmaceutical company to be located in Burlington. With more restaurants and retail locations opened in – or promised for – the town, the future is bright for the suburb, Cronin said.

“With all the activity and focus on it, I’d say Burlington is feeling really good about itself right now,” Cronin opined.

Visitors and workers in the town should feel pretty good, too, especially since Nordblom has secured 10 new liquor licenses for restaurants it plans to open as part of its upcoming redevelopment of Northwest Park. The park will be home to a 140,000-square-foot Wegmans supermarket with its own 800-car parking garage slated to open in the spring of 2014. Including the Wegmans, the retail portion of the re-positions Northwest Park will be about 300,000 square feet, said Douglas Wynyard, senior vice president with Nordblom. With office space and housing uses, the park is zoned to grow to as much as 4.6 million square feet of space from the current 2.5 million square feet.

“Something of a sea change has occurred [in Burlington],” he told Banker & Tradesman.

“In the past it was assumed that Burlington was the lower cost alternative to Waltham for space users locating to the suburbs. But that has very recently changed. Today, we believe Burlington is sort of ground zero for companies looking for a place to locate and grow over the course of years.”