Center Plaza Owners Look To Sell
A Government Center office building formerly home to the FBI’s New England headquarters is hitting the market.
Boston-based Synergy Investments and investment firm BentallGreenOak are putting Center Plaza, a 740K SF office building the partners acquired in 2017 for $365M, up for sale. Newmark Knight Frank is expected to officially market the three-building complex as early as next week, Bloomberg reports.
While the building served a government function until the FBI left in 2016, the building — like much of downtown Boston — has had a tech tilt in recent years. Grubhub, Spotify and Twitter all have offices at Center Plaza, which is 90% leased.
The complex was about 60% leased when Synergy and BentallGreenOak bought it in 2017, according to a Boston Globe report at the time. The partners spent $30M in renovating Center Plaza.
The sale exploration comes at a strong time for Boston’s office market, as the city’s urban core vacancy rate at the end of 2019, 7.1%, was the lowest seen this cycle, according to Newmark Knight Frank.
Center Plaza’s location across the street from the Government Center MBTA station also matches with tenant trends. Eighty percent of office and lab leases 100K SF or larger in Boston over the last two years have been within a five-minute walk of MBTA rail stations, according to Perry data.
