Steve Purpura leads Richards Barry Joyce & partners’ Cambridge advisory group, which brokered five of the submarket’s top six deals in 2009. RBJ’s Cambridge team represented the landlords who reeled in new leases for the Broad Institute and the Forsyth Institute, negotiated renewals and expansions for Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and ITA Software, and handled Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ headline-making renewal.

“And all the sizzle you hear about the growth of the life science sector is very real,” Purpura said. “We’ve been averaging 500,000 square feet of average annual new occupied lab space every year. That’s not something you see in many markets. It’s very unique to Cambridge.”

Steve Purpura

Title: Partner

Company: Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, Boston

Age: 36

Experience: 15 Years

In Cambridge, what’s been the difference between this recession and the last?

From a real estate standpoint, it’s very different than it was eight years ago. Before, it was tenants saying, ‘We’ll start a dot-com company, we’ll get $60 million, we’ll take down 60,000 square feet, and we’ll change the world and do an IPO.’ The landlords were there to service that. This time, you saw landlords with [capitalization] rates that went from 9 percent to 8 to 6, and they took their rent growth assumptions and just cranked them up and cranked them up. Values doubled and tripled. This time, the tenants have actually been the stabilizing factor. You’ve got assets out there that might be worth less than the debt on the building, but it’s still cash-flowing because tenants are continuing to pay their rent. Still, on the Class A side of the fence, I think everyone feels pretty good about Boston.

Does that perspective tend to get lost sometimes?

Not for us. We represent a lot of the major landlords, so in talking to them on the phone, we get that perspective. They say, ‘You should hear the story in San Diego, San Francisco, Austin.’ If you can’t get excited and bullish about Boston, you should take your ball and go home, because there’s no other place to put your money. That’s why the investment sales market is so quiet. People aren’t panicking.

What lessons do you take away from 2009?

We were very apprehensive a year ago. It was an undefined landscape. The game keeps changing, but the approach is pretty consistent. What are the pieces of the puzzle now? What are the opportunities? RBJ started in a market that, in a lot of ways, was a lot worse than it has been over the last 18 months … It’s not just going out, identifying five buildings, making proposals on three, and running a process. It’s also about looking at the entire playing field, and trying to identify leverage points. Our foundation was in this kind of market. A year ago, we said, we don’t know what we’re getting into, but we know we’ve done this before, and we’re well-suited for it.

BioMed Realty is in a really interesting position. If you assume the big blue chips are going to expand in the next few years, their building at 650 East Kendall is the only game in town.

We share that sentiment. You can’t create demand, but if you were to have an empty spec building in any market in the country right now, that would be the market and the building you’d want. If you need that kind of space, there’s little to no competition in that size. On one hand, we’ve got some chunks of vacancy; on the other hand, we’re excited about it. If that makes sense.

From the demand side, will there be demand for that type of space in that quantity this year?

Yes. This is a very active time right now. If there’s only one building available, at least that will be absorbed, and then it’s just a matter of, between the different developments being planned, who gets the jump on the next round, if you will.

Would the next round be build-to-suit, where tenants are matching up with development sites?

I think so. We’re not there, in the financial markets, to see a new spec building.

Even as tight as the market is?

Yes. That money just is not flowing yet.

What will this year’s story be?

In Cambridge, you are going to see some larger transactions, some bigger companies with some growth. There’s a fair amount of stuff going on right now, and the net gain at the end of the year will be pretty significant. The fact we started off the year with Forrester Research announcing they’re doing a build-to-suit in Alewife, is fairly significant. It is huge. You didn’t see that last year.

Purpura’s Top Five Sources of Pride in Richards Barry Joyce & Partners :  

• Founding a firm with good friends with a similar vision for a brokerage platform based on communication, information-sharing and client focus.
• Building and sustaining a locally-based firm that consistently competes at the highest level with larger, national firms.
• Fostering a positive work environment – “work hard but enjoy the ride.”
• Giving back – seeing a high level of community and charitable activity among team members.
• Atmosphere – I look forward to Monday morning as much as Friday afternoon.