Continuing an active year in Greater Boston’s commercial real estate investment market, a 45-acre office complex in Billerica is being sold to a California pension fund, industry sources said last week. The Concord Road Corporate Center at 296 and 300 Concord Road, currently owned by Leggat McCall Properties and DLJ Real Estate Investments, will trade for $42 million.

“It’s going to close [this] week,” said one Boston broker familiar with the deal.

In other deals, Blackstone Real Estate Advisors is said to have One Boston Place in downtown Boston under agreement for a reported $198 million, while Capital Properties has closed on 215 First St. in Cambridge, a property that was on the market for barely a week before being scooped up by the New York-based firm for $68 million.

At $42 million, the three-building, 350,000-square-foot Billerica complex would fetch $120 per square foot. While nowhere near the landmark $265 per square foot paid earlier this year for LMP’s premier Waltham Woods Corporate Center in Waltham, the broker called it “a healthy price” being paid by the California State Teachers Retirement System (Calsters) for the Billerica development.

Officials at CB Richard Ellis Real Estate Investors, who are reportedly representing Calsters, declined comment on the matter, but LMP President J. Brad Griffith confirmed last week that the complex is under agreement. Griffith, who would not discuss the price or the buyer, said the deal is the culmination of the joint venture’s strategy to buy the property three years ago, redevelop an existing 180,000-square-foot building and add a new, 165,000-square-foot structure.

“That was the original program, to redevelop and then sell it,” Griffith said. “We never intended to do anything else.”

Bull HN had occupied the existing structure for some time, and opted to re-lease 142,000 square feet when presented the renovation program. Other tenants in the complex include Eastman Software and Ducharme & McMillan.

“It’s a fully leased asset,” Griffith said. The buyers “will enjoy it, I hope.”

Fits and Starts
The Billerica deal is just the latest suburban Boston acquisition by Calsters, which recently purchased the Hayden Woods office park in Lexington and is in the process of buying a 155,000-square-foot property in Natick. Calsters is said to be in due diligence on 150 Staples Drive, a single-tenanted building that Calsters will reportedly pay $32 million to acquire.

The Natick building is being marketed by Trammell Crow Co. Principal Edward Maher Jr. declined comment on the deal, expect to say that Calsters is “a very active state fund right now.” He added that pension funds and private opportunity groups have been among the most prolific players this year, stepping in to fill the void left behind by the retrenchment of real estate investment trusts, as well as an on-again, off-again involvement of overseas money.

German investors have been especially schizophrenic this year, with their interest in buying United States real estate tied largely to the vagaries of the new currency of the European Common Union, the euro. After plummeting for much of the past year, the euro has seen a recent upswing, and Maher said the attitude towards buying in Boston has warmed correspondingly from the Germans.

“They definitely quieted down and we had them saying they were definitely out of the market, and now they are definitely back in,” said Maher.

The investment market has seen an equally inconsistent pace in the first six months of 2000, Maher said, with a flurry of transactions early on, followed by a quiet stretch in March and April. Now, he said, the atmosphere is heating up again, with interest in properties on a wide spectrum, ranging from $5 million to $200 million deals.

“The buyers are more selective now, but the deals are still happening,” Maher said.

Indeed, even with the currency swings and concerns over rising interest rates, Trammell Crow is on pace to exceed the $1.1 billion in property sales the Investment Services Group has reached each of the past two years. Through the first six months of 2000, Trammell Crow has already sold $600 million worth of property and has several other deals in the pipeline. Among the sales brokered in the first half of 2000 have been Watermill Center in Waltham ($35.6 million); the Davenport Building in Cambridge ($50 million); and Kilnbrook Office Park in Lexington ($33.2 million).

Maher said that even Trammell Crow was surprised at how quickly the 215 First St. property sold, but he credits Capital President Richard Cohen with pushing the deal through so quickly. While more than 100 years old, the five-story, 300,000-square-foot building is sited in East Cambridge, considered one of the strongest office markets in the country.

“He was awesome,” Maher said of Cohen. “He knew what he wanted, he saw how hot Cambridge is, and he went out and got it.”

Calls to Cohen were not returned by press deadline, but observers say one bonus in buying 215 First St. is a redevelopment opportunity presented by the inclusion of a large parking lot in the deal. While Cambridge is in the midst of a moratorium for commercial construction, and is never easy to navigate in the best of times, that piece of the purchase was reportedly a significant draw in getting Capital to commit so enthusiastically.

Across the river in Boston, the One Boston Place sale has plodded along much more slowly than 215 First St., but Blackstone and an unnamed partner are reportedly in the final stages of nailing down that major tower purchase. One source said Blackstone is already interviewing real estate firms as leasing agents for the 30-year-old building.

A previous deal that would have had Hines Interests Ltd. buy the 41-story, 770,000-square-foot structure fell apart when Hines tried to lower its agreed price amidst concerns about the tower’s shape. Blackstone, however, is supposedly willing to pay several million dollars more than Hines, even with an extensive capital improvement campaign supposedly needed to bring One Boston Place up to modern office standards.

Calls to the current owners, Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, were not returned by press deadline, while Blackstone officials also did not return calls from their New York headquarters.