News
Fenway Center Coming Soon
March 20, 2012
| Meredith Management is moving ahead with Fenway Center, a $450M mixed-use complex to be built over the Pike, after a state court ruling two weeks ago dismissing a lawsuit that had blocked its path for three years. (Patience is a virtue, if you have time for it.) The project will be the first effort in decades to build over the highway that gashed through the cityscape. | |
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| Meredith prez John Rosenthal is thrilled that his team can now put on a full-court press to select an equity partner and complete the financing package for Fenway Center. He hopes to start construction on the 1.3M SF development that will create a new western gateway into the city by e arly '13 and complete it by ?18. John says he's in talks with several major companies interested in bringing $100M of equity and $160M of debt into the project. John is confident: it's multifamily in a popular urban neighborhood where other major multifamily and mixed-use projects are under way, and it's in Boston, a top US multifamily market. (Based on that scale model, he's gonna need a lot of white paint when they build.) | |
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| Meredith CFO Jon Hickok (here with Fenway Center project manager Jerry Belair) says the legal delay may have been a hidden blessing. Meredith is better off looking for financing now than in '09 when the city and state first approved the plan, and the city was sued. Clearly, the capital markets are more liquid than they were. It also helps that Meredith has a 20-year lease from MASCO and two credit tenants (Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital) for Fenway Center's parking garage. But the tradeoff is that construction costs are higher now than they were three years ago. | |
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| Fenway Center, designed by Carlos Zapata Studios and The Architectural Team, will sit on 4.5 acres between Fenway Park and the Longwood Medical Area, including two acres that are air rights over the Pike. John says this will be the first project built over the highway since Copley Place was completed three decades ago. In total, Fenway Center will have 550 rental apartments, 160k SF of offices, a 1,290-space parking garage, 100k SF of retail and 30k SF of open space. Convenient to rapid transit, the state is building a new $14M commuter rail station nearby that will be fully solar powered by a photovoltaic power plant on the Fenway Center garage. John says it's the first entirely solar-powered US rapid transit facility. The state is also doing $12.5M in road improvements. | |
