This Week's Boston Deal Sheet
GI Partners acquired a mixed-use property featuring 479K SF of lab, data center and office space in Boston's Seaport District, it announced last week.
The property at 451 D St. sits within the Seaport’s life sciences cluster, and its tenants include biotech companies and data center operators such as AT&T, Elektrofi and Sensei Biotherapeutics. The prior owner of the seven-story building converted over half of the property’s rentable area to lab space.
GI Partners bought the property from Related Fund Management for an undisclosed price. Related acquired it in 2018 and will retain a minority interest following the deal, while Related Beal will continue as the property's manager. Eastdil Secured represented the seller and placed debt financing for the buyer.
“The Seaport has become a bona fide life sciences innovation hub and 451 D exemplifies our focus on serving the needs of small and medium-sized lab tenants through Class-A reusable buildouts," said John Sheputis, head of acquisitions for GI Partners Real Estate.
Based in San Francisco, GI Partners owns 37 properties totaling 83M SF across multiple U.S. markets, including two other life sciences assets in the Greater Boston area: 51 Melcher St. in the Seaport and 3 Burlington Woods in Burlington.
SALES
Beacon Capital Partners acquired Park 9, a four-building office park in Wellesley, Newmark announced last week. Newmark's Robert Griffin, Edward Maher, Matthew Pullin and Samantha Hallowell brokered the deal. The seller was BentallGreenOak, a Canadian property management group, on behalf of Sun Life.
The 375K SF office park includes 120K SF with the potential for life sciences conversion, and it has a six-story structured parking garage. The property is anchored by three longtime tenants: Sun Life, Morgan Stanley and Boston Children’s Hospital.
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Real estate investment company Barings paid $132M for One Patriots Park, a 144K SF life sciences building in Bedford, it announced Thursday. Newmark represented the seller, Jumbo Capital Inc. This is the second acquisition for Barings, which also bought the Flats on First, a 136-unit apartment complex in Cambridge for $103M.
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Arden Logistics Parks acquired eight properties in Southern Massachusetts for $160M. The portfolio consists of 1.3M SF of industrial space in Mansfield, Fall River, New Bedford, Seekonk, Attleboro and Norton. The deal was brokered by CBRE Boston’s Roy Sandeman and Scott Dragos.
The deal represented the first Boston-area acquisition for ALP, which has partnered with Arcapita Group Holdings on a joint venture aiming to grow its portfolio to up to $2B in gross asset value in the top 25 U.S. industrial markets.
EXECS
Hunneman hired Tyler Ewing as executive vice president and principal on its brokerage team. Ewing has over 22 years of commercial real estate experience, having worked as principal at Freudenheim Partners and senior managing director at Newmark Knight Frank/Grubb & Ellis. He started his career at Nordblom Co. after graduating from Babson College.
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North Reading-based construction firm Columbia appointed James Wrisley as project executive. Prior to Columbia, Wrisley worked at Bozzuto and at Erland Construction. Wrisley has worked on multiple major projects for clients including Boston University, MIT and Bristol-Myers Squibb. At Columbia, he will oversee projects throughout the planning and development phases and provide staff training.
THIS AND THAT
Marcus Partners celebrated the start of construction on Foundry at Drydock, located on Fid Kennedy Avenue in the Seaport. The eight-story, 262K SF life sciences project is 100% leased by Ginkgo Bioworks, a Boston-based cell programming company.
The groundbreaking also marked the start of a partnership between the Foundry team and BioBus, a nonprofit that works with underrepresented school children to teach them about science and technology. The team announced it will be donating $200K to the organization to expand its services to Boston and the Greater New England region.
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Samuels & Associates reached a major construction milestone on its air-rights project at Parcel 12 in Boston’s Fenway and Back Bay neighborhoods. The completion of the project's deck over the Massachusetts Turnpike and two train tracks is the first step of a 450K SF office and lab development that is slated to be the future headquarters of CarGurus. It will also feature a 150K SF citizenM hotel that will run entirely on electricity.
