This Week's Boston Deal Sheet
Lesley University just held the grand opening celebration for its new $46M Lunder Arts Center near Porter Square in Cambridge; the largest capital project in its history, and the second new facility since the 1970s.
Planning for the four-story, 70k SF facility designed by Bruner/Cott started in ’06 and construction got underway in the summer of ‘13. The complex joins a historic white clapboard church with a new terra cotta building to provide studios for everything from painting and drawing to digital art and animation. The church was moved from the corner of Roseland Street and Mass Avenue to make room for the new building.
The two structures are linked by a three level “arts common,” which is the heart of the school, Cambridge-based Bruner/Cott principal Jason Forney tells Bisnow. Inside, the commons facilitates a dialogue between the old and new structures and has a 20-foot-wide digital screen that displays art work, he says.
Construction & Development
Construction just started on $400k of improvements on the North End Park in the Greenway including upgrades to the garden, the Freedom Trail and new swinging benches to replace solid-metal seating that's too hot in the summer and is chipped. Funding has been provided by the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund, Normandy Real Estate Partners and Harbinger Development. All work is expected to be completed by Independence Day.
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Hoff’s Kitchen is buying and renovating a 100k SF building at 35 Green St in Malden that it will use as a food manufacturing plant for its bakery. Part of the project cost is covered by a $10M tax-exempt bond issued by MassDevelopment. The new facility will help the company expand production from the 15,000 cakes a day it supplies to retail outlets from Market Basket to Harvard University.
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Wellesley College is planning the renovation and modernization of labs and academic space in its Science Center with help from a $50k grant from the Mass Life Science Center.
Sales
Beacon Capital Partners, through an affiliate, paid Taurus Investment Holdings $125M for the 350k SF 160 Federal St, according to Banker & Tradesman. Taurus purchased it in ’01.
Leasing
LogMeIn is taking 118k SF at 333 Summer St, across the street from its current 100k SF HQ repped by LPC’s John Miller and Jeff Moore. In ’12, the cloud-based solutions provider did a relo from suburban Woburn into the Fort Point Channel section of the Seaport District.
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An affiliate of Geraghty Associates of Readville (JG Royal Mill /JJH Royal Mill) paid SBER Royal Mill nearly $32M for the 251-unit apartment Apartments at Royal Mills. CBRE/New England’s Simon Butler and Biria St John repped the seller and found the buyer for the West Warwick, RI, complex on the Pawtuxet River.
But Woburn has its charm. Ask CONTINUUS, which just opened a 3,800 SF office at 25-R Olympia Ave. This is the first facility for the company, which does drug development and manufacturing processes for the pharmaceutical industry, since its spinning out from the Novartis-MIT Center for Continuous Manufacturing in 2012. Pictured: Office of Housing and Economic Development's Michael Kennealy, State Rep. Jay Kaufman, CONTINUUS CEO Dr. Salvatore Mascia, MLSC CEO Susan Windham-Bannister, CONTINUUS co-founder Bayan Takizawa, Woburn Mayor Scott Galvin and MassBio CEO Bob Coughlin.
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Yesterday, Freshii opened its third Boston location in 1,300 SF at 185 Dartmouth St, a property owned by Synergy Investments. The fresh food restaurant that operates 160 stores plans to open another location in two months.
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Barrington Books, the 27-year-old purveyor of books, toys and specialty gifts, is opening a second location in 5k SF at Garden City Center near LA Fitness in Cranston, RI.
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Canadian Cubresa opened its first US office in the Cambridge Innovation Center. The company based in Winnipeg builds compact pre-clinical nuclear imaging scanners for drug and disease research. As the company looked around the world, it focused on Cambridge as a center of the pharmaceutical, biotech and life science industries, CEO James Schellenberg tells Bisnow.
People
We warmly remember the gracious Norman Leventhal, a Boston developer and philanthropist, who died on April 5 at age 97. In 1946, he and his brother Robert co-founded an enterprise that became the Beacon Cos. They built or redeveloped: Center Plaza, Rowes Wharf, the Hotel Meridien, 75 State Street, South Station and the wonderful park at Post Office Square that bears Mr. Leventhal’s name.
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Steve Rich joined Avison Young as a principal to rep downtown Boston office tenants. He comes from DTZ, where he was an SVP.
