This Week's Boston Deal Sheet
Leasing
Boston Globe Media Partners, parent of the newspaper, has agreed to take 75k SF at Exchange Place (53 State St) in Downtown Crossing. The move is expected to come in 2017. The Boston Globe is planning to leave its Morrissey Boulevard HQ and set up a printing site in Taunton.
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Babson College is leasing 9k SF at 100 High St, including 2k SF of ground-floor space fronting Federal Street. The college will offer classes for graduate business students and co-working space for alums in the 28-story tower owned by CBRE Global Investors. Cushman & Wakefield’s John Boyle and Rebecca Galeota repped the deal.
Development & Construction
Harvard won city approval to build the $171M, two-phase Klarman Hall and G2 Pavilion, to replace Burden Hall on the Harvard Business School campus. Phase 1, the 105k SF Klarman Hall, is a modern, media-equipped 1,000-seat auditorium with reception, meeting and service space. This initial phase also includes an underground connection to Spangler Center, a main building on campus.
Parkhead Development, led by Michael Indresano, got the green light from the city to build the $4M Taft Hill Terrace in Roslindale with 19 condos, bicycle storage, 19 on-site parking spaces and, for each owner, a $2k credit towards a carshare account to encourage active transportation.
Dorchester’s Epiphany School will build a nearly $9M expansion within walking distance of the tuition-free middle school. The new facility on Centre Street will house administrative staff and graduate support services. The plan by architect StudioMLA also includes: a greenhouse, an outdoor gardening area for students, three residences for teaching fellows, and early learning classroom space primarily to serve younger siblings of Epiphany School students.
Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp and Back of the Hill Community Development Corp will develop General Heath Square Apartments in joint partnership with 47 affordable residences on vacant lots near the Jackson Square Orange Line Station.
A 1912 industrial building in East Boston will undergo a $20M renovation and conversion into a 127-key loft-style hotel, Loftel. The façade of the existing building at 175 Orleans St will be restored, and a 6k SF addition will be built atop to house hotel common areas and mechanical space. The guestrooms will feature 12-foot-high ceilings, large windows and exposed concrete.
St. Francis House and the Planning Office for Urban Affairs will do a nearly $23M adaptive reuse of the historic Boston Young Men’s Christian Union building at 48 Boylston St in Chinatown for affordable housing. The currently vacant building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a Boston Landmark, will contain 46 units, nearly 11k SF of office space for St. Francis House, and 3,800 SF of commercial space. 20 of the units will be targeted to homeless individuals and families.
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The nonprofit Protestant Guild for Human Services will buy and renovate a 60k SF building on five acres in Concord for its new HQ. To help finance the project for the group that offers programs for individuals with mild to severe intellectual disabilities, MassDevelopment issued a $14M tax-exempt bond that Belmont Savings Bank purchased.
