Somerville's Boynton Yards Developers Reach $150M Deal To Buy Auto Shop For Project Expansion
The developers behind Somerville's Boynton Yards project have reached a $150M deal to acquire an auto shop that has operated for more than a century, with plans to expand the development on the 4-acre site.
DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners and Leggat McCall Properties reached an agreement with Nissenbaum’s Auto Parts shop to acquire the property located off of Columbia and Windsor streets, with plans to turn it into more life sciences lab and office space, the Boston Globe reported.
Last month, a nine-story building opened at Boynton Yards, the latest phase for the project featuring 1.8M SF of life sciences lab and office space, 450 apartments, a creative arts center and over 2 acres of public green space. Two other buildings are planned to open in 2024.
Nissenbaum’s, a family-owned and -operated business, has been open for the last 111 years. The two Nissenbaum brothers put the 4.1-acre site up for sale last year with Colliers International. The site was marketed for 1.2M SF of life sciences space.
Somerville has been rapidly building its own life sciences cluster by picking up spillover from the two strongest clusters in Kendall Square and the Seaport. Last year, BioMed Realty, a Blackstone portfolio company, proposed a 1.3M SF lab-and-office space next to Assembly Row, and in 2020, two parcels were sold to Normandy Opportunity Zone Fund and were also proposed for life sciences.
Through its SomerVision 2040 comprehensive plan, other developments have taken shape, and the new MBTA green line extension into Union Square is creating more opportunities. Last summer, a development team broke ground on the first phase of the $2B USQ project featuring life sciences and residential space near the new Union Square station.
