Spinelli Commercial Properties Chief Operating Officer Joseph F. Maloney and Chief Executive Officer Rachele M. DePamphilis are hoping their Wilmington business park is fully leased by October.

When a collapsing economy ravaged their Wilmington business park, officials at Spinelli Commercial Properties reached out for help – to themselves.

“We got back to the basics,” Chief Executive Officer Rachele M. DePamphilis said in a recent interview, explaining how she and Chief Operating Officer Joseph F. Maloney decided to market 150,000 square feet of vacant real estate through personal contact with prospective tenants. “We realized, ‘Who knows the properties better than we do?'” recalled DePamphilis, a 25-year stalwart at the firm founded by John T. Spinelli, the late Belmont contractor who crafted a 61-acre Wilmington parcel into the 15-building commercial park during the 1980s.

While stressing that her firm leaned heavily on Boston’s brokerage community, praising exclusive leasing agents Peter W. Evans and Darryl C. Morse of the Codman Co. for playing a critical role, DePamphilis maintained that the hands-on approach helped stir interest in the park, which is located just off Interstate 93 at the Route 125 interchange. “It has been phenomenal,” she said of the velocity, projecting full occupancy by October after being half empty in March.

Calling it the quickest lease-up he has seen during 17 years in the business, Morse concurred that the “secret formula” was getting leads to congregate with the landlord. “It was very relationship-driven,” he said. “The tenants got comfortable with Spinelli Corp. very quickly, and that made a big difference,” he said. The Cambridge-based company has an institutional mindset, said Morse, who places the quality of Spinelli’s buildings and detailed self-management approach on a level of Equity Office Properties or other Class A real estate operations.

“We put them right up there” with the area’s best landlords, said Morse, a Cambridge specialist who had done business in the past with Spinelli prior to being hired to lease the five problem buildings in the Wilmington park. Based in the city’s Alewife district, Spinelli also has properties in Canton, Newton and its home base. Despite having just traded a retail asset in response to the hot investment market, the firm is typically a long-term holder of its properties, said DePamphilis, employing service as a cornerstone of its real estate fiefdom, estimated at about 500,000 square feet. In the case of the Wilmington initiative, DePamphilis and Maloney not only met with companies seeking space, they even visited existing facilities to see how their properties could accommodate those requirements.

“People really responded,” said DePamphilis. Among the larger deals, Azores Corp. committed to roughly half of 12-16 Jonspin Road, a 65,000-square-foot building constructed in 1982. A.J. Mailing took 21,000 square feet at 46 Jonspin Road, while Stapla USA leased nearly 16,000 square feet at 250 Andover St. A contract is out to an unnamed firm for 18,000 square feet at 17-57 Jonspin Road, said Morse, who declined to identify the company or provide other details. Another 25,000 square feet is available at 12-16 Jonspin Road, with two firms said to be competing for that space. Sean Lynch and Torin Taylor of Cushman & Wakefield represented Stapla USA in its 10-year lease.

“It has worked out very well,” said Morse, who credited Evans and his colleague’s background in landlord representation for enhancing the leasing effort. Maloney also recognized the Codman team for its performance after previous lease-up bids had struggled. “They helped a great deal by casting a wider net,” said Maloney. “They didn’t just stay local.” A.J. Mailing, for example, is relocating from Medford, with that firm represented by Tim Brodigan and Greg Klemmer of Klemmer Assoc.

‘Getting Better’

Even more impressive, observed Maloney, is the success of the leasing program when set against the difficult economic climate, particularly in the northern reaches of suburban Boston. “This wasn’t a case of a growing market floating all boats,” he said. “It has been pretty quiet in the Wilmington area.” Besides the principal-to-principal philosophy of Spinelli officials, the properties also helped, according to Morse, who said the park has always attracted companies for the structural heft of the buildings and also the crisply manicured campus. “Our tenants love to walk the park,” said DePamphilis, noting that the visionary developer even buried utilities underground to enhance the landscape. Prior to the recent economic slide, the Wilmington complex had traditionally leased well, she said, but the demise of the technology industry hit the area hard, while one leading tenant left after its parent firm pulled their Bay State operations.

Other professionals active in Wilmington agreed that the pace has been slow, although Cushman & Wakefield broker James Thomson said the vacancy rate has dropped into the mid-20 percent range after approaching 30 percent last year. “It is getting better,” said Thomson, who is representing Griffith Properties on the leasing of two buildings near the Spinelli park. Those properties are being marketed primarily to large companies requiring 50,000 square feet or more, said Thomson, who reported a mix of defense and medical device tenants circulating in the area. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, for example, is said to be seeking close to 50,000 square feet, encouraging particularly given that firm’s presence in the Interstate 93 corridor.

Interestingly, Wyeth is a tenant in one of Spinelli’s Cambridge properties. DePamphilis has seen Alewife turn from a gritty industrial strip to one increasingly attracting life sciences, financial services and technology firms, although that area has had its own hardships since the new millennium. After that precipitous slide, the district does appear on the mend again, according to DePamphilis, as evidenced by renewed interest in buying her company’s properties. The firm, which is now owned by the founder’s daughter, Judith A. Spinelli, plans to keep its assets going forward, DePamphilis reiterated.

Looking ahead, Spinelli is working to combine its old-world approach with new concepts to make its operations more efficient, said DePamphilis, who cited Maloney’s arrival last year for enhancing that goal. Having cut his teeth in the high-tech industry, Maloney’s ideas on using technology to promote Spinelli and its properties was instrumental in the Wilmington leasing campaign, added Morse. Commercial real estate has been slow to embrace high-tech marketing, said Maloney, offering the chance to position the firm ahead of its competition. “That’s a significant part of our plan,” he said.