GE Sells Fort Point Land To Joint Venture For $252M
General Electric and Massachusetts are making a profit from the former blue-chip company’s diminished Boston headquarters.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities and National Development are expected to close on a $252M deal Thursday to acquire the property GE once intended to build the second phase of its global headquarters. The quasi-public state agency MassDevelopment will get almost $98M from the deal, up from the $87M in state funds used so far on the site, the Boston Business Journal reports.
Development plans are not known at this time, but Alexandria is best known locally for its life science portfolio in Kendall Square, and has built major life science facilities in Manhattan, San Francisco, Maryland and elsewhere. The GE site is permitted for 297K SF of office development.
Alexandria has acquired other properties in South Boston, and it has proposed, along with Anchor Line Partners, a 210K SF lab building at 99 A St. Alexandria and National Development purchased a parking garage at 10 Necco St. in March for $81.1M.
Many in Boston real estate circles expect the Fort Point Channel and West Broadway corridors to become a new local life science cluster given the area’s direct access to space-constrained Kendall Square via the Red Line.
Related Beal is buying more than 6 acres next to the GE property along Fort Port Channel for around $200M. While the company has not publicly announced plans for the site, many expect the development to include a life science component.
GE will still maintain its headquarters in Boston, but it will be less than previously touted when the company broke ground in 2017 on what was to be called Innovation Point. Work is still underway on renovating two Necco Street warehouses into a roughly 95K SF GE office.
