Image courtesy of Newmark
Wheelock Street Capital is the latest institutional investor to buy into the budding life science cluster in Somerville’s Inner Belt.
In a $160 million recapitalization, Greenwich, Connecticut real estate firm joined the ownership of 200 Inner Belt Road, which includes an office-lab-biomanufacturing building and 400,000 square feet of by-right-approved future development.
The existing 191,089-square-foot complex is 100 percent leased to five tenants including the Somerville Research Facility of Harvard University/Harvard Art Museums, the biomanufacturing/laboratory headquarters of Finch Therapeutics and the corporate headquarters of Triumvirate Environmental.
Newmark’s capital markets team represented existing owners North River Co. and North Colony Asset Management, procured Wheelock Street Capital as an investor and arranged $120.3 million in financing with Barings.
“200 Inner Belt Road offers an attractive combination of in-place cash flow and future upside with 400,000 square feet of by-right development potential on its 7.92-acre site,” Newmark Vice Chairman Edward Maher said in a statement.
The Inner Belt industrial area is emerging as a new life science and development cluster following the industry’s recent rapid growth in Union Square and Boynton Yards. The MBTA Green Line Extension will include a new stop on Joy Street on the edge of the district.
In September 2020, Criterion Development Partners paid $10.3 million for three parcels at 0-20 Inner Belt Road and 56 Roland St.
And in August, the Somerville zoning board of appeals approved New York-based North River Co.’s plans for a 4-story, 200,000-square-foot lab and R&D building at 28 Chestnut St.
