Cushman & Wakefield has been selected to market for sale the Riverfront Office Park in Cambridge, which includes the 18-story 101 Main St. (pictured) and its 14-story companion building at One Main St. The buildings contain a combined 670,000 square feet of space.
The whirlwind of commercial real estate investment sales appears to be showing no sign of blowing over in Greater Boston, with several area properties either quickly finding buyers or beginning the process to identify prospective suitors.
In the latest surge, a local firm has supposedly committed to acquire 211 Congress St. in Boston’s Financial District, while Cushman & Wakefield of Massachusetts has been selected to sell both the Riverfront Office Park in Cambridge and One Newton Place in Newton Corner. In another action, Boston Wharf Co. has supposedly retained Meredith & Grew to sell 253 Summer St. and a series of connected buildings in the Hub’s Fort Point Channel district.
Meredith & Grew already is spearheading the sale of 211 Congress St. on behalf of SSR Realty Advisors. The 68,000-square-foot retail/office building has seen its share of leasing difficulties in the recent economic downturn, but the ownership has worked to complete several leases in recent months to help stabilize the 11-story building and make it more attractive to investors.
According to industry sources, the Mayo Group of Boston has inked a contract to purchase 211 Congress St. for a price said to be in the range of $15 million to $17 million. Meredith & Grew principal Lisa M. Campoli confirmed that the property is under agreement, but declined to identify the buyer or provide the selling price. “We are proceeding towards a closing,” was all Campoli would offer, while the Mayo Group did not respond to inquiries by press deadline.
Campoli also passed questions regarding 253 Summer St. off to Boston Wharf Co. president Robert Kenney, who did not return phone calls on the matter. Nonetheless, sources insisted that the renovated warehouse and three connected yellow-brick office properties that curve along Melcher Street have been put up for sale by Boston Wharf, which itself is headquartered at 253 Summer St. Meredith & Grew recently brokered another multi-building sale on behalf of Boston Wharf in another part of Fort Point Channel area, fetching more than $90 million for those buildings, which total nearly 400,000 square feet.
Meeting Expectations
As for Cushman & Wakefield, company officials were unavailable to comment on its latest investment listing victories, but sources insisted that the firm is being hired to sell One Newton Place for Morgan Stanley, which took control of the four-story building as part of its recent takeover of Lend Lease Real Estate Investments. Developed in the mid-1980s by local player Ronald Druker, One Newton Place and its companion property, Two Newton Place, might be considered among the area’s earliest examples of so-called “infill development,” with office buildings constructed closer to Boston’s urban core than that seen in earlier waves of suburban construction.
In the Cambridge assignment, Cushman & Wakefield is among five different firms hired to sell various parts of a portfolio owned jointly by Hines Interests and the California Public Employees’ Retirement Fund. Hines and CalPERS first announced plans to sell the 10 million-square-foot portfolio in June, and has now determined which brokers will be involved in the marketing of what is referred to as the National Office Partners Limited Partnership, or NOP.
“That is the case,” NOP Portfolio Manager Daniel MacEachron said last week of Cushman & Wakefield’s selection for the Cambridge buildings, adding that another Cushman division is selling one of the partnership’s Illinois’ assets. Other NOP properties on the block are located in Houston, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Developed between 1984 and 1986, just as Cambridge was emerging as a viable destination for office space, the Riverfront Office Park consists of the 14-story One Main St. and the 18-story 101 Main St., with 670,000 square feet of space available between the two structures. Hines/CalPERS acquired the buildings in October 2000 for $213 million.
When the partnership bought Riverfront Office Park, Cambridge was among the hottest office markets in the country, with the Kendall Square district in which it is located boasting vacancy rates that hovered consistently near zero percent. All of that has changed since, acknowledged MacEachron, with most surveys now registering Cambridge vacancies in the 20 percent range and above.
The subsequent recovery has seen its fits and starts, but MacEachron said Riverfront Office Park has held its own, adding that the leasing roster will provide any buyer with a steady stream of rollover in rents, offering potential upside over the near term. Because of that, he said, NOP will only part ways with Riverfront if it attains a certain price from investors, a plateau he declined to identify.
“It’s a [complex] we would be happy to hold onto if we don’t get a price that meets our expectations,” he said. Properties will be offered on an individual basis, but MacEachron added that the ownership will also entertain a multiple-building acquisition. An asking price was not available for the One Newton Place asset, while sources estimated that the Riverfront Office Park should trade for well over $200 million. The goal, MacEachron said, is to complete the Riverfront sale by year’s end.
