This Week's Boston Deal Sheet

The Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences leased office space at a neighboring Simmons University building.

The school leased approximately 44K SF of office space from Simmons University at One Palace Road in the Fenway neighborhood. The school is taking up the second, third and fourth floors at the 54K SF office, the Boston Business Journal reported.

MCPHS plans to use the space for offices and academic uses. 

“Maximizing our real estate assets, including the partial lease of select spaces on campus, has and continues to be part of our long-term strategic plan,” Simmons spokesperson Laura Wareck told the BBJ.

The lease comes after Simmons made significant changes to its campus, including the 1.7M SF mixed-use Longwood Place development, which Skanska signed a $311M contract to build in June. The project would include 1,000 student beds, a 500-seat dining facility, 380 units of market-rate and affordable housing, life sciences and retail space.

Both colleges are part of the Colleges of the Fenway, a collaborative organization made up of five neighboring colleges and universities with more than 12,000 undergraduate students.

LEASES

Somerville Media Center will relocate and expand into a 5K SF lease at 29 Properzi Way in Rafi Properties' Somernova campus. The media company is in a 2,500 SF center at 12 Tyler St. The company was founded in 1983 at 90 Union Square until it was asked to vacate in 2023, The Somerville Times reported. The media company negotiated the temporary lease at 12 Tyler St. until it found a permanent space on the campus. 

FINANCING

MassHousing and the Healey administration plan to award a total of $6.9M in Neighborhood Stabilization Program grants to 10 community organizations to fund 37 affordable homes. Of these new units, 23 would be affordable homeownership opportunities. The program helps developers address blight, abandonment and disinvestment in neighborhoods. Since 2022, the program has awarded $19.6M in funding resulting in the rehabilitation of 123 homes. 

***

MassHousing provided $94M in financing for the preservation of the 432-unit Westminster Village Arms in Lowell. Developer Related Affordable will also use the funds to create $20M in property improvements at the site. The complex consists of 36 three-story buildings. 

The 432 units in the complex are restricted to households earning up to 60% of the area median income for at least the next 19 years. Four hundred of the units are also subsidized by the Section 8 voucher program, which will be renewed for 20 years. There is a mix of studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units in the complex.

CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT

HYM Investments, Cathexis and National Real Estate Advisors launched pre-leasing at the first residential building at the 16M SF Suffolk Downs development in Revere and East Boston. Its first residents won't move in until June but are now able to sign contracts for the units. The 475-unit Amaya apartment building includes 34K SF of amenity space and 24K SF of ground-floor retail.

HYM broke ground on the apartment building in 2022. During the ceremony, the partnership said it would plan to invest $775M toward the first 4,200 multifamily units in the development over the next eight years. There are planned to be over 10,000 new units of housing at the project.

***

Harvard University and Tishman Speyer filed a letter of intent with the Boston Planning & Development Agency for the 1M SF mixed-use Phase B of Harvard's Enterprise Research Campus. The new phase will encompass five new buildings, two of them residential and three with life sciences space. The multifamily buildings would add up to 420 new rental units. The filing comes after the joint venture broke ground in November on the 900K SF first phase of the campus.

***

Maine businessman Peter Gerrity proposed a 928K SF industrial project at a site in Middleborough, the Boston Business Journal reported. The project would consist of two phases on a 153-acre site at 678 Wareham St. Construction on the development would begin in early 2025 and finish at the end of the same year. 

Gerrity bought the property decades ago and had planned to develop a 400K SF, 10-lot industrial park called Sippican Commerce Park on the site before switching plans.

***

An entity linked to FPM Boston Real Estate filed a letter of intent with the BPDA to transform a 175K SF parking lot at 151 Rivermoor St. in West Roxbury into a 62K SF warehouse and distribution center. The site is surrounded by the MBTA's Needham commuter rail line and similar industrial properties. The property would be reduced by 11% to make way for “landscaped islands.”