BOSTON DEAL SHEET
| BOSTON DEAL SHEET |
| Don't adjust your monitors; we know this is the Boston issue, but we thought you might be interested in what we did yesterday in one of our other cities, a locale that can appreciate Boston's occasional baseball and commercial real estate struggles, Chicago. |
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| 350 joined us at the Metropolitan Club on the 66th floor of Willis Tower—which, of course, everyone still seems to call Sears Tower.(Our pop psychology theory is that eventually people realize they come across as really old if they're still calling the Met Life Building the Pan Am Building, and that should happen in about 15 years with the Sears Tower, too.) |
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| Legends Mike Reschke (who's developed $11 billion of commercial property like Citadel Center and 77 W. Wacker) and Paul Beitler(who's developed 10M SF of buildings, done 7000 leases including a million SF to JP Morgan Chase, and flies his own jet planes like John Travolta) were a bit glum. They say current circumstances are unlike most of what they've seen in the past. Mike suggested that TARP needs some ?FABRIC?: Federal Asset Backed Rating Insurance. |
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| Like a tourist, we took this out the window of our conference room, with Lake Michigan and Hancock Tower in the background. Looks beautiful, huh? It was 12 degrees. |
| Leasing CBRE's David Corkery and Mark Reardon negotiated a 216,780 SF lease with PetEdge for landlord ING Clarion Partners at 90 Salem Rd. in the Billerica Commerce Center in the town of the same name. The long term lease, announced on Wednesday, was signed Q409, one of the largest single story deals signed all year. PetEdge, a wholesaler and marketer of pet supplies will move into about 35% of the 612,685 SF warehouse and distribution center in Rt. 3 North submarket owned by ING Clarion Partners, the US arm of ING Real Estate Investment Management.*** Lincoln Property's Michael Edward represented landlord AP Levin Real Estate on three leases totaling 13k SF at 99 Chauncy St. in downtown Boston. The Massachusetts Law Reform Institute renewed for 8,950 SF; the Center for Law and Education renewed for 2,493 SF, and the Freedom Trail Foundation renewed for 1,500 SF. *** NAI Hunneman Broker Chris Gotfredson represented landlord Bay State Realty in its 6,717 SF lease renewal with the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education at 88 Broad St., a nine-story, 63k SF office building in the Financial District. Jason Cameron of Jones Lang LaSalle repped the tenant. *** Chris also negotiated for landlord 607 Boylston Associates and tenant Copy Cop when it renewed a 5188 SF lease for five years at 601?607 Boylston St. in the Back Bay. Investment Your Stimulus dollars at work …. Site prep and foundation work is underway in Wareham on The Village at 815 Main St. The developer of the $12M affordable housing complex had secured equity financing for construction in ?08. But when the financial crisis hit, the tax credit investor pulled the plug. Last year?s stimulus included public equity tax credit funding that Goulston & Storrs? David Abromowitz closed on to fund construction of the 11-building complex with 49 units of affordable rental housing (44 at 60% of area median income and 5 at 30% AMI), a community center, office and parking for 104 cars. The sponsor/developer is JKS Village, an affiliate of JK Scanlan Co, contractor for the project. *** Mark Dufton and Scott Oran, who most recently headed up Gordon Brothers Group's real estate investment division, announced that they formed Dinosaur Capital Partners, a private equity real estate investment firm. They plan to acquire core assets with underlying cash flow, opportunistic properties that need value enhancement; performing and non-performing loans, and will take preferred equity positions in recapitalization deals. They'll look for office, industrial, retail, multifamily, hospitality, mixed use and parking real estate with price tags in the $3 to $50M range. People Mark Norton joined Lincoln Property as a Senior Associate to focus on the Rt. 128 West and North markets. He's coming from Grubb & Ellis Boston's suburban team. Mark is a member of NAIOP and the Commercial Brokers Association. Assignments Owner?s rep Diversified Project Management of Newton has been hired by Brown University to provide management services for several projects. Diversified does programming, pre-construction, project management, constructing administration, FF&E coordination and move planning. It will work with the Ivy Leaguer on a sequence of campus renovations and relos to accommodate the growth of Brown?s medical and science programs over the next two years. It will work on 11 buildings, on and off campus, leased and owned. DPM will manage planning, help source and procure furniture, fixtures and equipment, and coordinate some TI work. *** Jones Lang LaSalle will provide construction management for the approximately $5.8M interior build out of KPMG?s 96k SF of new offices at Two Financial Center across the street from South Station. Its space on floors one through six of the recently completed building will be the firm's new Boston HQ, designed to accommodate 692 people. It plans to occupy it in June and will seek LEED Gold. Jobs Many forecasts remind us CRE performance boils down to jobs; the more people companies hire, the more space they'll occupy. So it was sobering to learn that Massachusetts lost jobs during the decade that just ended, as the Boston Globe reported on Monday. From 1999 through 2009, average employment in the state fell by nearly 2% compared to an increase of 4% in the 1990?s and a 20% increase in the 1980?s. |
