This Week's Boston Deal Sheet
Today Shepley Bulfinch announced that it's been chosen by Boston Children’s Hospital to design a new patient tower, with a development price tag of $1.2B, excluding land cost.
The 11-story, 500k SF building on the Longwood Medical Area campus— the largest in the hospital’s history—is slated for completion in early 2020. Among the new features will be single patient rooms and the creation of a Heart Center of Excellence.
Leasing
On Friday, Clarks Americas, a subsidiary of UK-based C&J Clark, signed a lease for a 120k SF build-to-suit with lead developer Boston Properties. Construction is slated to get underway this month at 1265 Main at CityPoint. The building will be occupied in phases starting late fall 2016 and certifiable as LEED Silver for its energy efficiency and use of recycled materials. Spagnolo Gisness will design the exterior while ADD Inc now with Stantec will do the interior design with extensive input from employees of this 190-year-old business.
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Citrix Systems signed for 44k SF at Nordblom’s 15 Network Dr at Northwest Park in Burlington. It’s joining other techies in the building: NetBrain, Avid Technologies, Oracle, Exa Corp and Veracode. For this relo from Bedford, Cushman & Wakefield’s Mark Roth, Matthew Malatesta and Blake McLaughlin repped the landlord while JLL’s Matt Daniels and Andrew Whipple repped Citrix.
Eli Lilly is taking 17k SF floor of lab and office space for 10 years at BioMed Realty’s 450 Kendall St in the quickly expanding life science and pharma East Cambridge cluster. The pharma giant plans to establish there The Lilly Cambridge Innovation Center, its first location in Massachusetts. With construction slated to start ASAP, Lilly expects first occupancy by year-end. Transwestern | RBJ repped the landlord. Over the next two years, Lilly expects to hire about 30 scientists and engineers for the center. Once in full operation, it will increase the company's delivery and device research and development space by nearly 50%, and add to the Lilly staff in this sector by 25%.
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Ooo la la…The old line French bakery Paul opened yesterday in Downtown Crossing at 201 Washington St with a new twist…the 126-year-old sweet shop’s first full service restaurant at One Boston Place. Other US locations: DC, Miami, Assembly Square and Natick Mall.
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Nephrology Associates of the Merrimack Valley leased 3,462 SF at 600 Clark Rd in Tewksbury from Legacy Real Estate Ventures repped by Eastport Real Estate’s Mike Jaffe. Nephrology Associates, repped by The Edge Group’s Fred Faust, will do the relo from Lowell later this summer.
Sales
An affiliate of The Praedium Group paid Wood Partners and JV partner Bavin $59.5M for Alta Legacy Farms, a 240-unit apartment community in Hopkinton that started leasing in July ’13 and was completed March ‘14 for a $45M development cost. The 18-acre property includes seven three-story, garden-style buildings and a clubhouse. It’s part of the master-planned Legacy Farms, a 730-acre mixed-use community of 940 single-family and attached homes, 450k SF of commercial space and about 500 acres of open space.
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Bay State Community Services figures it’s better to own than rent. It’s buying its current 20k SF outpost at 1120 Hancock St in Quincy with the help of a $2.5M tax exempt bond issued by MassDevelopment and purchased by Blue Hills Bank supported by a MassDevelopment guarantee.
People
Michael Coffey has joined Berkshire Group as an SVP for client relations. He comes from Greenhill & Co, where he was VP the real estate capital advisory group, and has worked for Guggenheim Partners and Credit Suisse.
About Boston
Mayor Walsh is launching a two-year citywide planning process—Imagine Boston 2030—the first effort to write a new master plan in 50 years. For some critical city submarkets like Back Bay, this could be the first time their own specific contemporary development needs are considered. Such planning may lead to new zoning requirements that are critical for development.
