In baseball, runs can be scored by manufacturing them through a series of base hits and smart base running. Or, your slugger can simply hit a home run.

Both strategies can work, but the latter carries no small amount of risk – after all, your slugger could strike out.

In East Cambridge, Equity Office Properties (EOP) is opting for the latter strategy at its 10 Canal Park property adjacent to the Cambridgeside Galleria. Come September, they will kick a handful of existing tenants to the curb as their leases expire, in favor of trying to attract one large user.

At present, East Cambridge boasts 522,000 square feet of vacancy – just 6.9 percent of the 7.6 million square feet that comprise the submarket, according to information provided by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.

But most of that space is scattered about the area, and there are very few large contiguous blocks of office space in the neighborhood. There are, in fact, only three properties with more than 40,000 square feet of contiguous space available. And one of them won’t even open until the end of September.

That one property hitting the market in September is EOP’s 10 Canal Park. The firm is marketing the approximately 118,000-square-foot property in an effort to attract a single tenant, according to industry sources familiar with both the property and the Cambridge market.

Pros & Cons

From a strategic standpoint, it’s a smart move, given the scarcity of spaces available to large users – several of which are currently seeking space.

Amazon is currently hunting for 40,000 square feet in Cambridge. And Nokia is said to be tracking space for about 60,000 square feet in which to plant its flag.

“There aren’t a lot of large blocks of space available or coming available [in East Cambridge] this year,” said Daniel Kollar, vice president for Jones Lang LaSalle. “It makes sense from a credit standpoint to have one large user on a lease as opposed to several smaller ones.”

But “several smaller” tenants are exactly what EOP currently has on its hands at 10 Canal Park.

The building was initially designed as a single-tenant property, from the lobby to the floor layout. And it had served just one tenant – Aspen Technologies – for years.Aspen renewed a 10-year lease with Equity in 2002, which expires this year.

But after it renewed, Aspen realized it did not need that much space and relocated to Burlington, according to Duncan Gratton, senior managing director with Cassidy Turley in Boston, who worked for Equity before moving to FHO Partners, now Cassidy. So Aspen subleased the property to several smaller tenants. The building is now home to seven tenants, with only 8,000 feet – less than 7 percent – remaining unoccupied.

Those sub-leases are likely not the most lucrative deals available in the market, Gratton told Banker & Tradesman – when a tenant is trying to dump space to sub-letters, as Aspen was, that space doesn’t go for a premium.

The tenants located at 10 Canal Park are likely paying somewhere in the mid-$20s per square-foot. But rents for a single office user in that submarket would likely be closer to the $50s per foot.

So EOP’s choice essentially boils down to keeping the building occupied and at least minimally productive – albeit with several smaller tenants – or rolling the dice on a risky strategy aimed at attracting one big user at the expense of the others.

They have chosen the latter.

‘Relocation Packages’

“The tenants in there now are likely unprepared to pay the $40 or $50 [per square-foot] rents the market has come to now,” Gratton opined. “The property is less of a commodity when you’re offering a single-tenant building. If [a tenant] is looking for 20,000 square feet in East Cambridge, they probably have 6 or 7 choices as opposed to saying, ‘I’m an 80,000 or 100,000-square-foot tenant with my own building.’ That’s something a tenant would pay a premium for. There aren’t as many of those large users out there, but [Equity] will do fine with that property. Their timing is good and the market is in their favor.”

Come September, those seven tenants are going to need to find new homes. Many of the companies currently at the property had hoped to engage Equity to remain in the building for longer-term leases, said John Coakley, vice president for tenant representation firm Cresa in Boston.

“Everyone’s been sort of focused on it to see what will happen there,” Coakley offered.

For their part, EOP says it has been in discussions with the existing tenants about potentially locating to other properties the company owns nearby, said Vicki Keenan, senior director of leasing for Equity. She would not, however, discuss how the company “restructures relocation packages.”

Currently, the building is getting attention from full-floor and full-building users, according to Keenan.

“We’re going to make in an investment into the building and reintroduce it to the market,” Keenan said. “There aren’t a lot of opportunities like it in this market. The building is heavily subdivided now for Aspen’s subtenants. We’re going to go in and make the building more usable for today’s clientele.”