5 $100M-Plus Deals Quietly Closed Around Boston As 2020 Wrapped Up
Commercial real estate did not go silently into the night before the new year, with several nine-figure deals closing quietly in Boston’s suburbs.
Major transactions in every asset class posted in the days before the calendar flipped, a small flurry of deals before the year’s end representative of the unique pressure on buyers to get deals done before the end of Q4.
Here are the five largest deals around Boston that closed in the waning weeks of 2020, according to a Bisnow analysis of public land records.
152 Grove St., 43 Foundry Ave. and 41 Seyon St., Waltham
Buyer: TPG
Seller: Hilco Real Estate
Price: $344M
Hilco flipped a 615K SF campus 10 miles from Boston for a hefty price to holding companies tied to San Francisco-based private equity firm TPG.
The Illinois-based seller bought the two-building office campus at 43 Foundry Ave. and 41 Seyon St. known as CenterPoint from a Rubenstein Partners and Saracen Properties joint venture for $86M in 2018, Commercial Property Executive reported at the time. The site was a former research and development and manufacturing hub for Raytheon and was then occupied by life sciences and office tenants.
The $344M deal, which closed on Dec. 21, according to property records, also includes The Gauge. Hilco redeveloped the 135K SF former Standard Thomson Co. industrial headquarters into lab and office building, leased to Panasonic and Humatics, according to Colliers. The Gauge is fully leased after recently signing UK biopharmaceutical firm Abcam Inc. to a 100K SF lease, according to Newmark.
400 and 600 Summit Drive, Burlington
Buyer: MilliporeSigma
Seller: The Gutierrez Co.
Price: $252M
MilliporeSigma, the North American life sciences arm of German pharmaceutical giant Merck, bought out its lease from The Gutierrez Co. at a modern facility in the growing lab hub of Burlington. The 350K SF, two-building headquarters was purchased in separate deals totaling $252M Dec. 21 from Gutierrez, which has developed 2M SF of life sciences assets in Burlington alone.
MilliporeSigma has seen a boost in business during the coronavirus pandemic, developing supplies for labs working on COVID-19 vaccines, it said last month. Merck’s North American arm last month also is spending $47M to expand production facilities in Danvers and New Hampshire.
5 Middlesex Ave., Somerville
Buyer: BioMed Realty Trust
Seller: Cresset Partners and Novaya Real Estate Partners
Price: $163M
The nation’s largest private owner of life sciences real estate finally closed on a rising 9-acre Somerville campus known as XMBLY on Dec. 23, according to property records.
When BioMed announced plans to acquire the development, it said it would replace plans for 167 apartments with an additional 100K SF of office and lab space, The Boston Globe reported in June.
Cresset and Novaya's received approval in 2018 for the 1.5M SF project, which sits near Federal Realty Investment Trust’s Assembly Row and the massive Partners Healthcare headquarters.
42, 65 and 80 Industrial Way, 1 Progress Way, Wilmington
Buyer: Oliver Street Capital
Seller: Arthur Kanavos
Price: $148M
Boston-based Oliver Street continued to scoop up industrial assets in Wilmington, adding four properties in a deal posted to North Middlesex County land records Dec. 31.
The sites, which include a Crate & Barrel distribution center, are near recent Oliver Street acquisitions, including a 256K SF Ballardvale Street portfolio purchased for $55M in a joint venture with Bain Capital Real Estate.
190 Bridge St., Salem
Buyer: Pacific Urban Residential
Seller: Bell Partners
Price: $115M
Pacific Urban Residential enters the Boston market with the purchase of the 266-unit Salem Station apartment complex, the company announced Tuesday. The property, which will be renamed Sofi at Salem Station, adds to the 11,000 units Pacific Urban manages across the country.
North Carolina-based Bell Partners has owned the community along the North River shoreline since acquiring it for $77M from Blackrock in 2015. The apartments were built in 2002, sit on 14.7 acres and are 100% market-rate, according to the Palo Alto, California-based buyer.
