Norges Bank Buys Stake In Kendall Square Lab Developments At $1.7B Valuation

Private equity giant Blackstone has sold an apartment community on the Canton-Randolph border, more than doubling its investment five years after buying the property.

The firm sold the Prynne Hills apartment building for $143.5M to an entity linked to Friedkin Property Group, Banker & Tradesman reported. Blackstone bought the property for $61M in 2018.  The 473-unit apartment complex at 9 Bay Drive was completed in two phases in 2008 and 2013. The…

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Joel Marcus walked into the Downtown Los Angeles office of investment giant AEW on Sept. 9, 1996, unsure how much longer his business would survive.

The co-founders of Alexandria Real Estate Equities were running out of money, and they were trying to pitch an idea that had no proof of success: building a company focused on owning lab properties and leasing them to firms in the emerging biotech industry.

Despite the potential upside of Marcus’ pitch — biotech was just beginning to address the thousands of known diseases with no cure — he was rejected by the first 29 investors.

Entering his 30th meeting, Marcus could tell co-founder Jerry Sudarsky was growing weary. But the Air Force veteran remembers feeling confident as he ran through his talking points. 

The pitch worked: AEW agreed to invest $27.5M in Alexandria's Series B round. After shaking hands and walking out of AEW's conference room, Marcus knew the firm would make it to the next stage of his grand plan: going public.  “That Series B was really the key,” he told Bisnow in…

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WeWork’s bankruptcy filing last week rippled through property and financial markets as landlords braced for the potential impact of the coworking giant pulling out of leases and their corresponding office spaces.

But with an initial round of 69 leases the company wants out of, the broader coworking industry that WeWork revolutionized in better days could shift as other providers step into the void.

“We've taken over a dozen-plus WeWorks already,” Industrious Chief Operating Officer Liz Simon said in reference to deals her company executed in recent years as WeWork sought to improve its balance sheet. “Those won't be the last time that we do. So far they've rejected 70 [leases] and some of them are places we'd love to be operating. And we expect there to be more to come.”

IWG CEO Mark Dixon  told CoStar last week that his company had also taken some WeWork spaces and was likely to do more of the same. However, the future of coworking and its footprint in a struggling office market is still in flux, with conflicting market forces weighing…

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