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Jeremy Freid
Title: Senior Partner, 128CRE
Age: 44
Industry experience: 15 years
Steve Adams
Jeremy Freid was ready for a career change while building on his experience as a commercial broker in the Boston suburban markets. The Newton resident and former Boston Realty Advisors partner founded Newton-based 128CRE early this year and picked up where he left off, as the firm carves out a specialty in suburban leasing and investment sales. The firm’s listings include the former New England Mobile Book Fair property in Newton, which is under agreement to an undisclosed buyer. The Newton-based company is led by Freid, Adam Meixner and Doug Adamian, who added brokers Jordan Sneider, Matt Perry and Meghan Huebner to round out the team.
Q: Which towns comprise your core geographic submarket?
A: The urban markets and suburban markets are starting to blend a little bit. From Mass Ave. in Back Bay to the east, that’s clearly an urban market with a ton of density. When you go west, it starts to get a little bit fractured. From Kenmore and Allston-Brighton through Brookline and Newton, every half-mile you go west, you get more suburban.
You have companies whose C-level executives live in the suburbs and have to be in the golden triangle of the western suburbs, who don’t want to be in the city or Back Bay. They want to be 20 minutes from home and their daughter’s dance recital.
Then there’s a whole mix of ’tweeners who aren’t really sure where they want to be. Those are sort of the swing companies that people are really vying for. The Seaport is trying to lure those. In Newton and Needham, we’re trying to lure them to the N2 Innovation District.
Q: With the success of redevelopments such as Founders Park in Needham, are there many more opportunities to reposition Route 128 office parks as mixed-use properties?
A: I don’t know how many sizeable parcels are left, but you see what Anchor Line Partners is doing (at Post 200 Smith) in Waltham. Normandy is selling off a lot of what they developed in Needham, and there’s the Northland project coming online on Needham Street in Newton and what Robert Korff (from Mark Development) is hoping to do at Riverside. I’m on the economic development commission in Newton, and Adam is on the Council of Economic Advisors for the town of Needham. We’re plugged into all the development in our market, and we’re very biased because we’ve always been suburban brokers, but we think there’s plenty of opportunities to lure those big tenants into the ’burbs.
Q: How is the Newton EDC trying to boost job growth?
A: The EDC just got food trucks approved on Wells Avenue, which is a big win. There’s still a ton of office inventory and we have a lot of these alternative uses in those buildings: Solomon Schecter Day School, Boston Sports Club, the Russian School of Mathematics, day care. You’ve got a diverse mix of uses now in that park, but because it tends to be a Monday through Friday park, you don’t have the walkable amenities that a Needham Street might have, or projects like Northwest Park in Burlington. We’re just going to make that product more enticing by offering food trucks.
We’re talking about rebranding the park, and a second means of egress and working with Northland on their huge project to figure out what is the right mix of uses. They have 27 acres in the heart of Newton where they can really do something special, similar to Robert Korff at Riverside. He has transit, which is the big box that a lot of these corporate tenants are trying to check when they think about putting their flag in the ground and recruiting Millennials who might be living in Cambridge or South Boston.
You’re seeing suburban markets that were never strong commercial office environments, and because they have transit, development is happening: Malden, Everett, Somerville. Look at Boston Landing once that commuter rail stop got through.
Q: Has foreign capital been showing an appetite for acquisitions in the top suburban markets?
A: A lot of the aggressive foreign capital ends up in urban core markets. The last few months, we have seen a few groups from Asia coming to our office and looking at a few of our projects. I don’t know if that’s a trend or an outlier.
Q: Where are the rent values on 128 for tenants and where are you seeing rent spikes?
A: Because the Seaport and Back Bay pricing is so high, you go west and Watertown is starting to absorb some of that. You see some higher rents in Watertown and a few miles west, there is a real value play in the 128 market. If you’re more of a regional player and don’t care as much about being inside 128, 495 is a huge value play but that’s a pretty big cultural leap.
Q: What’s been the response to the New England Mobile Book Fair property listing in Newton?
A: We’re under agreement on that with a buyer. That’s a 31,000-square-foot flex building with 14-foot clear heights and mezzanine office. The flex industrial inventory has just gotten either fully absorbed or torn down and redeveloped. Trying to find a building that has that kind of clear height for an industrial user, it’s hard to find inside 128 anymore. That market is probably one of the hottest asset classes over the last few months.
The Book Fair property is 1.5 acres, which could be a major mixed-use (development), but given the lack of inventory, the current buyer is going to keep the building, spruce it up and market it to the tenants who can’t find space anymore. That may not be the long-term play, but it’s a covered land play where you buy it with some nice income coming in.
Freid’s Five Favorite Local Snack Spots:
- Ice cream: White Mountain Creamery, Chestnut Hill
- Steak and eggs: Deluxe Town Diner, Watertown
- Slice of pizza: T-Anthony’s, Boston
- Hummus: Café Landwer, Brighton
- Wings: Buff’s Pub, Newton (across the street from 128CRE’s office)
