November 27, 2007  12:32pm
BioMed Inks Full-Building Lease for 50,000 SF
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
CAMBRIDGE, MA-A well-located commercial building is no longer an option for tenants in this city’s white hot office market, as Senior Whole Health is committing to nearly 50,000 sf at 58 Charles St. The 10-year agreement will allow SWH to expand its occupancy by more than double what it has heretofore leased at the property in East Cambridge.
“It’s a good building that works well for them,” Richards Barry Joyce & Partners principal Steven Purpura tells GlobeSt.com in assessing SWH’s decision to remain. Not only is it situated in the heart of the city’s most prominent office submarket, 58 Charles St. offers such attractive features as brick-and-beam space, a flexible layout and a private parking lot, says Purpura. The two-story building is owned by BioMed Realty Trust, which acquired the asset in early 2006 for $13.1 million.
Gian Starita of Lincoln Property Co. represented the tenant in the lease, while Purpura and RBJ assistant VP Eric Smith negotiated for BioMed Realty. Starita says SWH wanted to remain in the city where it was founded and was able to convince BioMed that a full-building deal versus converting the space to laboratory use made economic sense over the long run. “It was a neat deal that met everyone’s needs,” says Starita, who earlier this year joined Lincoln colleague Kevin Brown in finding 6,000 sf for SWH in Raynham for a suburban office.
The 58 Charles St. transaction carries the momentum of a strong third quarter into the final frame of 2007, although Purpura says the pace appears to have eased recently from the frenetic summer stretch that dropped the East Cambridge office vacancy rate to 8.6% by the end of Q3. That is the lowest vacancy rate since Q2 2000 when the mark was a miniscule 0.2%, notes RBJ director of research Brendan Carroll. Interestingly, Carroll reports that the amount of occupied office space in East Cambridge is actually greater now than it was in 2000, reaching a rate of 7.3 million sf presently versus 7.1 million sf in the previous boom.
The SWH transaction will allow the tenant to remain in a submarket that is becoming increasingly bereft of substantial alternatives, especially if pricing is a concern—and even if it is not. There are just three options in East Cambridge for more than 50,000 sf of class A space, says Carroll, those being 3 Cambridge Center, 25 First St. and One Rogers St. Perhaps more alarmingly, RBJ research shows that East Cambridge is the only submarket in Greater Boston whose vacancy rate is under 10% that has no new office space either under construction or even proposed. Starita concurs that SWH had few alternatives to stay in Cambridge beyond 58 Charles St. even though he characterizes that property as class B, albeit on the high end of that scale.
At current levels, class A office space in Cambridge will be fully depleted by Q3 2009, RBJ estimates. A big reason has been the higher rewards for laboratory space, leading new development in that direction during the past few years. “Class A is extremely tight,” says Purpura, with the second and third quarters of 2007 marked by a series of high-profile leases that took major blocks of office product off the market. RBJ is broker for Cambridge Center, whose recent transactions include Google taking down 60,000 sf; Biogen renewing for nearly 100,000 sf; and Akamai Technologies securing 260,000 sf, the largest lease to date in Cambridge this year. Owned by Boston Properties, Cambridge Center appears to have fully recovered from the area’s difficulties from 2001 through 2005, with occupancy at the multi-building park now at 99% after falling into the 70% range.
RBJ puts the current average rental rate for class A at $51.52 per sf in East Cambridge, representing a stratospheric increase of 57% from Q3 2006. Landlords are requesting upwards of $57.50 per sf, Carroll reports.

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November 14, 2007
Biotech firms taking more lab space in Boston area
Boston Globe

Biotechnology companies are gobbling up a growing amount of laboratory space in the Boston area, according to a report by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, a commercial real estate firm in Boston.

The report found vacancy rates for lab space fell to 9.1 percent for the two quarters ending Sept. 30, the first time vacancy rates have fallen below 10 percent since 2002. And tenants occupied more than 12 million square feet of lab space in the region, the most ever recorded.

The report also identified several neighborhoods where biotech companies could expand, including Boston's Allston neighborhood and Cambridge's NorthPoint and Alewife areas. (Todd Wallack)

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November 9, 2007
Report gauges area’s next likely biotech clusters
Boston Business Journal

The next biotech cluster could be located on a swath of land in Cambridge or one of the new developments in South Boston, according to a new report on the industry.
In its bioSTATus report due to be released today, Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC cites future developments such as the 6.5 million-square-foot project known as Seaport Square in South Boston, the 352 acres that Harvard University plans to turn into its Allston campus and a 5.2 million-square-foot mixed use project known as North Point in Cambridge as future “cluster” sites.
“What this data is showing you here is people want to be near the cluster in Cambridge,” said Robert Richards, president of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.
Biotech companies like to be together in places like East Cambridge and Longwood Medical Area. So much so, that the clusters biotech companies created by locating side by side in Kendall Square and the LMA are now at capacity, according [to] the bioSTATus report. There is 2 million square feet of development land remaining in both Kendall Square and the LMA, according to bioSTATus. However, if demand continues, the space that could be developed would be full within six years. Richards predicted North Point would be the next magnet site for biotech, noting that several tenants have seriously considered locating offices at North Point.

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October 30, 2007
Nagog Park Nails 50,000 SF of Leases
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
ACTON, MA-Nagog Park, one of suburban Boston’s more eclectic commercial addresses, is enjoying a late season surge. The master-planned development has secured 11 transactions exceeding 50,000 sf of space in eight office buildings controlled by KBS Realty.
The commitments feature a mix of first-time leases, expansions and renewals, headlined by a 12,000-sf renewal from Tatara Systems at 35 Nagog Park. KBS is welcoming software developer Peermeta Inc. for 7,000 sf at 43 Nagog Park, the same property where Tervela expanded their presence by nearly 6,000 sf. Liberty Mutual Group is also staying put, with the insurance giant taking more than 3,000 sf at 30 Nagog Park.
“We’ve had a nice flurry of activity,” relays Richards Barry Joyce & Partners VP Jamey Lipscomb, whose firm is exclusive leasing agent for the 387,000 sf controlled by KBS at the 11-building, 73-acre property. The landlord has been key in the solid performance at Nagog, according to Lipscomb, citing an approach accommodating prospects and making the upgrades necessary to compete in a market still awash in office and flex space. “They are making it easy to do deals,” he says. “Nagog Park garners a high level of attention because it allows for corporate growth, is easily accessible, and has proactive ownership,” adds RBJ principal Brian McKenzie, who was joined by Lipscomb and RBJ principal John Wilson in negotiating the leases for KBS.
Nagog Park is unique for a variety of reasons, says Lipscomb, including a picturesque setting afforded by the abutting Nagog Pond and a nature preserve. The park also features extensive retail anchored by the Nagog Mall, including five restaurants. Office tenants “definitely like that,” Lipscomb tells GlobeSt.com. KBS VP John Kolb says Long Beach, CA-based KBS is impressed by the pedigree of Nagog Park and its diverse array of occupants. “While often considered a high-tech park, Nagog actually features tenants from a range of industries, as well as an excellent mix of large, established companies and smaller, emerging firms,” Kolb says.
While concurring with that notion, Lipscomb accedes that Nagog’s reputation is for catering to high-tech companies, a branding he suggests is a combination of the firm’s legacy housing such companies, coupled with the high-tech nature of the MetroWest office market that tends to spawn startups, another specialty of Nagog. A spurt of venture-capital funding offers hope for that element to continue, says McKenzie. Tervela, for example, is backed by Acartha Group, Goldman Sachs and Sigma Partners. Young companies would also likely benefit by the flexibility and leasing discount at Nagog, maintains Lipscomb, with terms as brief as two years and sub dividable down to 1,000 sf. Rents are in the mid- to high teens per sf. versus $20 per sf and up right off I-495, he notes, and more than double that rate in the core Route 128 Central submarket.
RBJ Associate Robert Byrne was broker for Peermeta in its lease, while Matt Adams of Cushman & Wakefield represented Tervata. CresaPartners principal Maureen Young was the agent for Liberty Mutual. T3 Realty Advisors Managing Director Mark Cote was broker for Tatara. Specific terms of the leases were not divulged. The occupancy for the KBS portfolio is now at 75%, and Lipscomb says several prospects circulating could push that rate even higher by year’s end. The rate is slightly better than the 26.1% vacancy rate overall for the I-495 West, according to RBJ, which tracks 14.1 million sf in the submarket.

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Friday, October 26, 2007
RBJ will lease Woburn corporate center
Boston Globe / Boston.com

Boston real estate services firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC said it has been retained as the exclusive leasing agent for Presidential Woods Corporate Center in Woburn.
The center is a two-story, 104,000 square-foot building purchased earlier this year by a joint venture of the Campanelli Cos. of Braintree and Commonfund Realty, RBJ said.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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October 12, 2007
VinCo Picks Up 35,000-SF Tenant
GlobeSt.Retail

By Joe Clements
WILMINGTON, MA-A flexible commercial property in this suburban community north of Boston has an agile new tenant in GymStreet USA. The athletic training facility has taken nearly 35,000 sf at 1 Jewel Dr., a 200,000-sf building owned by VinCo Properties.
GymStreet touts itself as an operation focused on “fun, health and fitness,” offering strength and stamina training classes for both children and adults. Programs at the facility will be structured to accommodate the hectic new millennium lifestyle thrust upon many families, according to company officials. The tenant was represented by the Stubblebine Co., with the assignment handled by David Stubblebine and Ellen Garthoff.
Boston-based VinCo has retained Richards Barry Joyce & Partners as exclusive leasing agent for 1 Jewel Dr., a 200,000-sf building that the firm acquired in August 2006 for $4.8 million. The firm has since set about repositioning the property, which offers a mix of flex, manufacturing and office space. The two-story building is situated between two key state roads, Routes 38 and 129, and also is close by Routes 128 and Interstate 93. The location has led to substantial flex, industrial and office development in recent years.
In the GymStreet USA agreement, James Lipscomb of RBJ handled negotiations on behalf of VinCo. The building’s leasing team also includes RBJ principals Brian McKenzie and John Wilson. Founded by Vince O’Neill, VinCo Properties owns several commercial properties in suburban Boston, including 78 Dragon Ct. in Woburn, a 75,000-sf building located a few miles east of 1 Jewel Dr.

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007
RBJ brokers US, European leases
Boston Globe / Boston.com

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, a Boston-based commercial real estate firm, said that its national brokerage services group recently brokered 14 leases in 12 cities in the United States and Europe.
RBJ said it brokered leases totaling 16,267 square feet for Forrester Research Inc., a Cambridge-based technology research group, in Dallas and a submarket of Paris.
RBJ also said it brokered an entire floor sublease for office space in London for the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm that bills its people as "global connectivity experts."
In addition, RBJ said it brokered three leases totaling more than 35,000 square feet for Sapient Corp., the Cambridge-based technology consulting firm, in San Francisco and suburban Washington, D.C.
RBJ also said it brokered eight leases and lease renewals around the country for OneBeacon Insurance Co., which has a big presence in Canton.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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October 10, 2007
Older buildings a hot market
Boston Herald

By Scott Van Voorhis
  
Forget the Hancock Tower or State Street’s new high-rise headquarters near South Station.
After spending billions to buy Boston’s top skyscrapers, real estate investors have taken a shine to the city’s older and humbler office buildings.
While sales of Class A office towers are experiencing a lull, more than a third of Financial District office buildings built before 1940 have changed hands in the past year. They include 45 Milk St., an 1893 Beaux Arts style building that fetched $39 million over the summer. That’s about $500 a square foot - a number that a few years ago would have been a top price for a downtown tower.
Overall, sales of older, Class B buildings in the last year have rung up at a median sales price of $256 a square foot, Richards Barry Joyce & Partners reports.
Driving the interest has been a rebound in the Class B office market, with rents having escalated 30 percent over the past two years, said Richard Herlihy, an executive vice president at Richards Barry.
But the prices being paid include a premium for future rental increases as well, Herlihy said. “The buyers of these properties have to continue to hope that rental rates in the Class B market rise up to justify acquisition costs,” he said.

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October 5, 2007  01:24pm
Going Global Solo, RBJ Leases 150,000 SF
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
BOSTON-To Richards Barry Joyce & Partners president Robert Richards, the best choice in commercial real estate is multiple choice. Unaligned with any national or global network to service clients bearing cross-border space needs, RBJ has nonetheless created a thriving business outside its core New England focus, as evidenced by the Boston-based firm’s announcement of 14 leases orchestrated in a dozen cities throughout the US and Europe.
“We are extremely pleased with the way our National Group is going,” says Richards, who accepts an industry mindset that firms such as his have to capably assist clients on a worldwide scale. The difference, he says, is that RBJ is not beholden to a single network. “We certainly have respect for our competitors--and in fact we often wind up using them if it makes sense--but we want the best people for each assignment, and they are not always going to be in the same office,” says Richards. “Our only goal is pleasing the client, and that means finding the right people to make that happen no matter what.”
The latest series of deals boasts a powerful lineup of four firms operating internationally, including Forrester Research, OneBeacon Insurance Co., Sapient and Yankee Group Research. More than 150,000 sf of space was committed in the 14 leases, the bulk of them brokered on behalf of Canton-based One Beacon. Those transactions accounted for 84,000 sf in such markets as California, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota and New York.
Also taking a substantial amount of space was Sapient. The global services company committed to 35,000 sf in two leases in Arlington, VA, and another in San Francisco. Cambridge-based Forrester leased more than 16,000 sf in two deals, with the research company taking space in Dallas and in a Paris submarket. Another technology research firm, Yankee Group, also established a presence overseas, subleasing an entire floor in London. Besides Richards, RBJ team members negotiating the leases were Kristin Connelly, director of national accounts; and VP Richard Bradbury.
OneBeacon has been utilizing RBJ’s guidance “coast-to-coast” during the past four years, relays the insurer’s internal VP of real estate, John Ferrari, who estimates the firm has completed 35 transactions on its behalf. “They have an excellent understanding of our business and have aided us in a significant reduction in our occupancy expenses,” says Ferrari. Richards, who is doing work as far a field as India, cites such testimonials as proof that the independent approach can be successful. “There’s no doubt in my mind we’re 100% right on this,” says Richards. Today, about 30% of RBJ’s revenues are generated outside metropolitan Boston, a market in which it has become a leading player after Richards and several colleagues struck out on their own in 2001.

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Thursday, October 4, 2007
I-495 office market gains strength
Worcester Business Journal

Written by Matthew L. Brown
  
According to commercial real estate broker Richards Barry Joyce & Partners of Boston, Class A space in the I-495 West market is 13.7 percent vacant, lower than the 14.0 percent vacancy in the Route 128 West market, which is 40 percent pricier.

RBJ released its Greater Boston office market third quarter report, which notes that the office market experienced 867,000 square feet of absorption in the quarter, lowering vacancy 0.5 percent to 13.8 percent.

During the same time, Class A asking rates surged $2.38 to $40.96 per-square-foot.

Three consecutive quarters of positive absorption in Westborough have yielded 333,000 square feet of new occupancy, according to RBJ.

According to the firm, the I-495 West submarket boasts the newest inventory of available Class A space in the metro area, with the average available square footage constructed at 1,993; the Greater Boston average is 1,986.

Also, pricing has increased 10 percent along I-495 in just two quarters but remains affordable relative to increasing rents in downtown Boston.

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Thursday, October 4, 2007
Vacant office space vanishing from local markets
Boston Herald

By Scott Van Voorhis

The Greater Boston office market is so hot that it has spawned a new term - “time to depletion.”
That is the phrase Hub commercial real estate firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners has coined to decribed a new phenomenon: The date by which there will be no meaningful blocks of office space left in key areas of the local market.
At the current rate of growth, with companies expanding and steadily filling the market’s remaining gaps, a number of Boston neighborhoods and suburbs will reach their “depletion date” over the next two years or so, said Brendan Carroll, vice president of research.
The Back Bay, Cambridge and Seaport office markets, as well as suburban office centers like Newton and Burlington, all face looming depletion dates. In fact, Richards Barry has created the RBJ Depletion Index to track the trend.
The Back Bay, for example, has about 890,000 square feet of available office space left in various towers and buildings. Given empty space is being absorbed in the neighborhood at nearly 400,000 square feet per year, “that is a little over two years of empty space,” Carroll said.
Overall, Richards Barry’s quarterly OfficeSTATus report, set be released today, pegs Back Bay’s vacancy rate at 7.1 percent, Cambridge at 7.6 percent, and Route 128 West at 13.2 percent.
“All are in critical short supply of office space,” Carroll said.
In fact, the local office market has not seen this level of activity since the middle of 2000, during the last boom, said Robert Richards, president of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.
If current trends continue, companies in search of larger offices will be forced to consider new construction, with a number of developers drawing up plans for new towers, he said.
“If this keeps up, there will be no way to go but new construction,” Richards said.

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September 27, 2007
Piedmont Offers Former BTS Property for Lease
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
BOXBOROUGH, MA-An office property completed six years ago as a built-to-suit for Agilent Technologies is now on the leasing market, as owner Piedmont Office Realty Trust seeks to take advantage of an improving suburban Boston economy. Based in Norcross, GA, the non-traded REIT acquired the 175,000-sf 90 Central St. in May 2002 as Wells Real Estate Funds, an affiliate of the Wells Real Estate Investment Trust that became Piedmont this summer.
“We’re excited about the Greater Boston real estate market right now and the surge of activity that is being felt in the region,’ says Piedmont principal Brett Miles in announcing that his firm has retained Richards Barry Joyce & Partners as exclusive leasing agents for the three-story building. RBJ principal John Wilson, who is handling the assignment with colleague James Lipscomb, says he believes the opportunity will be well-received by the technology community, a constituency enjoying an enhanced level of IPO and venture capital financing in recent months.
There is presently 62,000 sf available at 90 Central St., and the landlord is willing to subdivide in increments of 8,000 sf. Designed by ADD Inc. of Cambridge, a leading architect of corporate facilities, 90 Central St. has the amenities, systems and location to be crowned a “best-in-class” destination, according to Wilson, who is quite familiar with the property. Not only was he Agilent’s broker initially, Wilson joined Lipscomb in subleasing the space for the Hewlett-Packard spin-off after New England’s economic meltdown rocked the market, prompting Agilent to depart for a nearby property. The space managed to attract subtenants such as Applied Micro Devices, which took nearly 65,000 sf on 90 Central St.’s second floor, a coup at a time when vacancy rates for I-495 were approaching 40%.
The property helps make up Tech Central @ Boxborough, a two-building, 325,000-sf park that Wells acquired in 2002 for $48.9 million from developer Koll Bren Schreiber, $35.1 million of which went for 90 Central St. Piedmont specializes in class A office buildings, and presently has a 23-state portfolio encompassing 82 buildings in excess of 21 million sf. Given that the vacancy rate in the 14.1 million-sf submarket has been reduced substantially at the three-quarter pole of 2007, Miles expresses optimism for the leasing program. “We feel the asset is well-positioned to satisfy the needs of the area’s office users,” he relays.

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September 26, 2007
Hill Holliday Inks 110,000-SF Office Lease at 53 State
CoStar

Brookfield Properties Signs Ad Firm to 10-Year Deal at Exchange Place
Hill Holiday, a Boston advertising agency, signed a 110,046-square-foot, 10-year lease at 53 State St., known as the Exchange Place, in Boston.

The 40-story, 1.18 million-square-foot, Class A office building was built in 1984 and is in the financial district.

Jim Brady of Cushman & Wakefield Inc. represented Hill Holiday. Michael Joyce, partner, and Tom O’Regan, vice president, of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, represented the landlord, Brookfield Properties.

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September 18, 2007
Realty Associates buys Franklin building
Boston Globe / Boston.com

Realty Associates Advisors LLC has purchased 38 Forge Park, a single story flex building in Franklin, for $10 million, a broker involved in the transaction said today.
The broker is Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, a Boston-based commercial real estate firm.
Richards Barry Joyce said it represented the seller, Patriot/Reading Associates, a California-based private real estate investor, and procured the buyer, Realty Associates, a Boston-based institutional realty fund.
A flex building can accommodate a number of uses, including office and showroom space as well as manufacturing, laboratory, and distribution space.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Sleepy's wakes up in Franklin
Worcester Business Journal

Written by Cory Hopkins   
National mattress retailer Sleepy's LLC of New York has signed a sublease with Natick-based BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. for 142,120 square feet of warehouse and distribution space at 32 Forge Park in Franklin, the companies said.

The new space will become Sleepy's new Massachusetts distribution center, the company said. Forge Park is a 2.7 million-square-foot industrial and warehousing complex.

Sleepy's was represented by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, while Jones Lang LaSalle represented BJ's.

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September 17, 2007
Sleepy's to move distribution center
Boston Business Journal

Sleepy's LLC has signed a sublease for 142,120 square feet of warehouse and distribution space with BJ's Wholesale Club Inc.
The mattress retailer will move into 32 Forge Park in Franklin, Mass., which will become the company's new Massachusetts distribution center. Sleepy's will be situated in the 2.7 million-square-foot Forge Park, which provides tenants with access to Interstate 495 as well as a nearby MBTA commuter station.
Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC represented Sleepy's LLC in the transaction and Jones Lang LaSalle represented BJ's Wholesale Club.
According to research by Richards Barry Joyce, the Route I-495 South submarket consists of 16.2 million square feet of Warehouse space and was 16.1 percent vacant, as of the quarter ended June 30, 2007.

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September 12, 2007
Sleepy’s Subleases 142,120 SF From BJ’s Wholesale Club
Mattress Retailer To Open Warehouse and Distribution Center in Franklin
CoStar

Sleepy’s LLC signed a 142,120-square-foot sublease at 32 Forge Park in Franklin, MA. Sleepy’s is subleasing the space from BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. The property at 32 Forge Park will become Sleepy's new Massachusetts warehouse and distribution center.

The single-story, 142,120-square-foot, Class B industrial building was built in 1990 and is in the I-95 Corridor South Industrial submarket. It is in the 2.7 million-square-foot Forge Park complex.

John Lashar, partner, and Paul Leone, vice president, of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners represented Sleepy’s. Rick Schuhwerk and Bill Bailey of Jones Lang LaSalle represented BJ’s Wholesale Club.

Sleepy's is one of the largest mattress retailers in the United States. It is a privately owned bedding chain with more than 450 stores in the Northeast.

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August 31, 2007
Agreement close for sale of former Wang Towers
Boston Business Journal

by Michelle Hillman

Davis Marcus Partners Inc. is negotiating a deal to purchase the former Wang Towers complex in Lowell for about $180 million.
The 1.2 million-square-foot property, called Cross Point Towers, was put on the market for sale in June by owners Yale Properties USA and DivcoWest and was expected to sell for as much as $200 million.
Real estate sources have speculated for several weeks that Boston-based Davis Marcus was among the high bidders for the three-building property.
James McCaffrey of Eastdil Secured LLC declined to comment on the sale of the property that it is selling on behalf of the Yale and Divco. Jonathan Davis of Davis Marcus also declined to comment.
However, a real estate source with knowledge of the sale confirmed Davis Marcus has emerged as the buyer after Eastdil examined a final round of offers last week. Davis Marcus is a Boston-based development and investment firm that manages about 4.5 million square feet of property.
While the northern suburbs have struggled with high vacancy rates, the Cross Point complex was expected to be attractive to buyers because it is 90-percent leased.
Among the blue-chip tenants in the 12- and 13-story towers are Motorola Inc., the IRS, JP Morgan Chase, Metropolitan Life and Verizon.
The property was attractive to tenants given the rising rents in neighboring markets and convenient location overlooking Interstate 495 and Route 3. A majority of the 500,000 square feet of leases -- including a 200,000-square-foot lease with Motorola -- were signed in the past 24 months when rents year ticked upward, said Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, which was hired to lease the complex by Yale and Divco. The real estate firm was also retained by Eastdil to provide marketing information to prospective buyers.
"It's got an excellent rent roll," said John Wilson of RBJ. "It's got a very strong credit rent roll. You have Motorola, Verizon, JP Morgan, the IRS. I think there's definitely upside in the purchase."
Davis Marcus is reportedly interested in the property because of its amenities, tenants and unique nature. It includes backup electrical systems, HVAC and fiber-optic cable. The property also contains a Fitcorp, Starbucks, a bank, covered parking, two cafeterias, conference rooms and a 500-seat auditorium.
Two years ago, Yale Properties contemplated selling the property outright, but decided instead to buy out its partner at the time, Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. If Yale had moved forward with the sale in 2005, the property was expected to sell for about $120 million, or $100 per square foot.
The towers -- which were the worldwide headquarters for Wang Computers in the 1980s -- cost $60 million to build and once hosted 4,500 workers. In 1992 Wang declared bankruptcy, and the property was sold at foreclosure to a development team for $525,000 in 1994, according to published reports.
Several years later developers sold the building to Yale and Blackstone for $100 million.

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Friday, August 24, 2007
ImmunoGen moving to Waltham
Boston Globe / Boston.com

ImmunoGen Inc., a company focused on developing anticancer therapeutics, has signed a lease in Waltham, where it will relocate its headquarters from Cambridge, a broker involved in the transaction said today.
The broker is Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, a Boston-based full service commercial real estate firm that represented the Waltham property's landlord, Intercontinental Real Estate Corp., a Boston-based real estate investment and management services firm.
ImmunoGen's lease is for 88,930 square feet of space at 830 Winter St. in Waltham, and ImmunoGen was represented in the transaction by T3 Advisors LLC, a real estate firm with offices in Waltham, said Richards Barry Joyce.
RBJ said it is the exclusive leasing agent of 830 Winter St., which is now fully leased.
"The scarcity of opportunities in Cambridge, which was created by the tremendous growth of Greater Boston as a hub of biotechnology, has helped fuel the growth of biotech in the suburbs," RBJ partner Jonathan Varholak said in a statement.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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Friday, August 24, 2007
Puma pays $11.5M for new headquarters
Boston Business Journal

Puma North America paid $11.5 million for a 104,711-square-foot office building which will serve as its new US world headquarters location.
The building, located in Westford, Mass., will house the athletic brand's North American operations including sales, marketing, retail, customer service and finance. Puma currently occupies 80,000 square feet in two buildings at 5 and 6 Lyberty Way but the company did not disclose plans for those buildings.
Puma, which employees 300 people in New England, will move its headquarters to Westford in the fall of 2008.
"Puma has aggressive strategies for the coming years. To reach our goals while not sacrificing desirability, the right location is crucial," said Jay Piccola, president of Puma North America, in a statement. "We have long considered Westford our home, and we're happy that our move will keep us here."
The acquistion, which was originally reported in the Boston Business Journal last month, was negotiated by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC on behalf of Puma. The seller was Franklin Street Properties Corp. of Wakefield, Mass.
Puma North America is owned by a subsidiary of Puma AG, based in Herzogenaurach, Germany. The company has been based in Westford since 1997 with previous headquarters in Brockton and Framingham. In addition to the Westford offices, Puma's global marketing and product design offices are located at the Boston Design Center.

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August 24, 2007  
ImmunoGen Signs 89,000-SF HQ Lease
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
WALTHAM, MA-In one of the bigger coups for suburban Boston’s life sciences sector, ImmunoGen Inc. is relocating here from East Cambridge, parties involved in the transaction have announced. The firm will occupy 89,000 sf of 830 Winter St., a 182,000-sf Class A building overlooking Route 128 that is owned by Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. of Brighton.
“Intercontinental is pleased to have ImmunoGen as a tenant and we look forward to a long-lasting relationship with such a reputable company,” says Thomas Taranto, head of asset and portfolio management for the landlord. ImmunoGen CFO Daniel Junius cited the ability to combine all of the firm’s administrative and research functions in a single facility as key to their decision to vacate one of the world’s top concentrations for life sciences companies. “We think 830 Winter St. is ideally suited to our needs and will provide us high-quality lab and office space for many years,” says Junius.
As exclusive leasing agents for 830 Winter St., Richards Barry Joyce & Partners negotiated terms on behalf of Intercontinental, while Roy Hirshland and Mike Shreve of T3 Advisor were brokers for the tenant. Michael Frisoli and Ron Friedman of RBJ handled the assignment for Intercontinental along with RBJ principal Jon Varholak, who notes that Lexington and Waltham have become preferred alternatives for Cambridge companies. “The scarcity of opportunities in Cambridge, which was created by the tremendous growth of Greater Boston as a hub of biotechnology, has helped fuel the growth of biotech in the suburbs,” says Varholak.
Of the 3.7 million sf of laboratory space in suburban Boston, Lexington and Waltham account for 36% of the inventory and 62% of all Class A lab product. As of mid-year 2007, the inventory of suburban lab supply was at 21%, according to RBJ director of research Brendan Carroll.

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August 23, 2007
Immunogen signs lease for Waltham building
Boston Business Journal

ImmunoGen Inc. signed a lease to move its headquarters to 88,930 square feet of office and laboratory space owned by Intercontinental Real Estate Corp.
The Boston Business Journal reported in June that the biopharmaceutical company was negotiating a lease to move out of its current headquarters in East Cambridge for 830 Winter St. in Waltham, Mass. ImmunoGen, which develops novel targeted anticancer therapeutics, will occupy office and laboratory space on each of three floors at 182,106-square-foot building.
"ImmunoGen is excited to have the opportunity to bring all of our research operations into a single facility along with our corporate offices," said Daniel M. Junius, chief financial officer of ImmunoGen Inc., in a statement. "We think 830 Winter St. is ideally suited to our needs and will provide us high-quality lab and office space for many years."
ImmunoGen (Nasdaq:IMGN) was represented in the lease by T3 Advisors LLC and the landlord, Intercontinental Real Estate, was represented by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC.

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August 17, 2007 
Morris & Morse Buys 80,000-SF Office Building
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
WESTBOROUGH, MA-A state-of-the-art building originally developed as the regional headquarters for General Electric Corp. has changed hands, with 1400 Computer Dr. selling for $13 million. The buyer is an institutional client of Boston-based Morris & Morse Co., a real estate investment advisory firm.
Efforts to contact officials at Morris & Morse to discuss the deal were unsuccessful, but the firm announced in a press release that Richards Barry Joyce & Partners has been retained as exclusive leasing agents for the 80,000-sf building. RBJ’s investment sales group also negotiated the purchase of 1400 Computer Dr. on behalf of the buyers. The RBJ brokerage team included Richard Bradbury, Richard Herlihy, John Lashar and Paul Leone, while the latter two brokers will handle the leasing assignment.
In announcing the deal, RBJ officials cited the building’s overall quality as a key selling point, with substantial technology incorporated when the structure was constructed in 1991 to be the northeast headquarters for General Electric. Besides the modern element to the building systems, RBJ lists a roster of on-site amenities expected to be attractive to prospective tenants, including a fitness center, and notes visibility along Route 9 and direct access to the Massachusetts Turnpike and Interstate 495 as other benefits.
“It’s a really nice play for them,” Bradbury says of the buyers. “They got a nice price per-sf that allows them entry into the Westborough market, and they also got a really nice building.” A measure of stability is included from the lease to 1400 Computer Dr.’s chief tenant, Carlin, Charron & Rosen, an established accounting firm that occupies the bulk of the space.
Westborough is one of the central communities in suburban Boston’s Interstate 495 West office market, using its close association to the state’s regional road network as an advantage in attracting commercial development. Besides a host of Class A office parks in the area, Westborough also features several ancillary uses, including daycare services, hotels, restaurant and retail.
Interstate 495 West was among the submarkets hardest hit by the Massachusetts recession, but RBJ research indicates a revival of the economy throughout the MetroWest, as tenants rattled by sharply rising prices in the core markets such as Waltham are considering fringe locations. As of mid-year, I-495 West still had a high vacancy level of 17.3%, but RBJ director of research Brendan Carroll says the 16.4 million-sf submarket has enjoyed five straight quarters of positive absorption.

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August 9, 2007
iRobot has 12-year lease in Bedford
The Lowell Sun

BEDFORD -- iRobot Corp. has officially announced that it plans to move its corporate headquarters north from Burlington to Bedford in mid-2008.

Company officials confirmed in May that the move was imminent, but declined to provide details.

On Tuesday, the company said in a statement that the new 157,000-square-foot location will provide office and laboratory space, as well as additional land for outdoor robot testing.

The move will roughly double iRobot's available space, according to Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, the company that brokered the deal.

iRobot is known for its Roomba vacuuming robot and Scooba floor-washing robot. The company also does significant business with the military, providing scouting robots for dangerous operations in war zones.

The company is entering into a 12-year lease at the new location, 8 Crosby Drive in the Bedford Business Park. iRobot currently employs more than 400 people around the world, the majority of whom work in Burlington. The new building was formerly occupied by Abbott Laboratories and is owned by Boston real-estate firm Boston Properties.

Jon Varholak of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners said the transaction is indicative of a booming commercial real-estate market in the area.

"The 128 North submarket is home to a host of emerging and existing technology companies," Varholak said in a statement. "As the year progresses, we are seeing growing interest in the region, which is evidenced by iRobot's lease in Bedford."

iRobot, which was founded in 1990 by three scientists at MIT, reported 2006 revenues of $189 million.

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August 8, 2007
iRobot Signs Tech Lease for 157,000 SF
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

BEDFORD, MA-Boston Properties has secured one of the larger and more sought-after leasing requirements of 2007, as technology firm iRobot signed a 12-year agreement for 157,000 sf at 8 Crosby Dr. The property, also known as the Bedford Business Park, had previously been occupied by Abbott Laboratories.
The pact is evidence of burgeoning interest for space in the Route 128 North office submarket, according to Jon Varholak, a principal at Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. The region “is home to a host of emerging and existing technology companies,” adds Varholak, who negotiated the lease for the tenant along with RBJ colleague John Wilson. Boston Properties was represented in-house by SVP David Provost, VP Stacey Baker, SVP Jim Rosenfeld and project manager Richard Monopoli.
Getting iRobot to make such a long-term commitment to the property and the region required a broad-based effort, says Monopoli. He praised state economic officials, the Massachusetts Highway Department, the town of Bedford and the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management for playing critical roles in that mission.
After an extensive search of the market, iRobot selected Bedford Business Park for a variety of reasons, Varholak explains, including quick access to the expanded Route 3 corridor, the pedigree of the landlord, and a competitive tenant fit-out allowance. Besides iRobot’s headquarters, Boston Properties will make upgrades to the complex overall, including a new facade on 8 Crosby Dr. The parties did not provide information on rental rates for the deal.
The deal at Bedford Business Center takes away another sizeable leasing opportunity for the Route 128 North submarket, one which RBJ research shows running out of space by the end of 2010 should the current pace of demand continue. Although the recent sale of the Sun Microsystems campus in Burlington is expected to free up a six-figure block of contiguous space, several hefty tenants are circulating in Route 128 North, including Phase Forward and Palomar Medical Technologies.
According to RBJ, the Route 128 North office submarket of 24.1 million sf does have a substantial vacancy rate of 22%, but velocity has been solid for a prolonged stretch, with more than 900,000 sf of positive net absorption registered between the mid-year marks of 2006 and 2007. The second quarter was especially robust, with net absorption on the plus side by 316,000 sf.

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August 7, 2007
FedEx Doubles Its Space in West Bridgewater
CoStar Group

Liberty Signs Shipping Company to 88,490-SF Lease at One United Drive
FedEx Ground leased 88,490 square feet at One United Drive in West Bridgewater, MA, doubling its space. FedEx is currently utilizing 41,000 square feet at 1020 W. Chestnut St. in Brockton.

Built in 1987, One United Drive is a two-story, 315,000 square-foot, Class A industrial building in the Route 3 South Industrial submarket.

John Lashar, Paul Leone and Cal Hudak of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners represented the landlord, Liberty Cos. Tom Byrd and Joe Pelle of Fischer & Co. represented FedEx Ground.

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Tuesday, August 7, 2007
IRobot is moving its HQ to Bedford
Boston Globe / Boston.com

IRobot Corp., the Burlington company known for its Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and for military robots that can detect battlefield threats, has signed a long-term lease for a new headquarters in Bedford.
The announcement was made by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, a Boston-based commercial real estate advisory firm that is a broker involved in the transaction.
Richards Barry Joyce said that iRobot has signed a lease for 157,000 square feet of space in an office building at 8 Crosby Dr. that is owned by Boston Properties Inc., a locally based real estate iinvestment trust whose portfolio includes such buildings as the Prudential Tower in Boston.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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August 3, 2007
FedEx moving to wide, open space: Local services going to West Bridgewater
Patriot Ledger

By KYLE ALSPACH
GateHouse News Service

FedEx plans to move some of its local services out of Brockton and into a much larger building in West Bridgewater.

The company’s home delivery services at 1020 W. Chestnut St. will leave this fall, taking 60 employees and contractors to a building at One United Drive in West Bridgewater.

FedEx spokeswoman Allison Sobczak said the company wanted more space for its home delivery base in the area and found the West Bridgewater building to be the best fit. The site is not far from the Route 106 interchange at Route 24, and will provide about 88,500 square feet of space, compared to the roughly 41,000 square feet being used in Brockton, Sobczak said.

The expansion will not mean the addition of any new jobs immediately, she said.

West Bridgewater Selectman Matthew Albanese said the town is succeeding in its efforts to be recognized as business-friendly.

‘‘The town has revitalized its Industrial Development Commission. We’ve worked on marketing our town to businesses,’’ said Albanese, who is also a member of the commission. ‘‘We want people to know that we are a partner with business.’’

FedEx will retain its business-to-business ground services at 985 Belmont St. in Brockton, Sobczak said. That building, which houses 140 staffers and contractors, is being expanded. The company plans to enlarge the complex from about 63,000 to 72,000 square feet, Sobczak said.

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners represented the owner of the West Bridgewater building, Boston-based Liberty Cos., in the negotiations with FedEx.

Liberty acquired the 315,000-square-foot building at One United Drive in March 2006; it was previously used by United Liquors. Most of the building consists of warehouse space. In October 2006, SWB New England, an ethnic food distributor, leased 80,000 square feet in the building for its headquarters. With the arrival of FedEx, the building will be more than half full.

‘‘One United Drive was an excellent acquisition for Liberty Cos.,’’ Mohsin Amiji, CEO of Liberty Cos., said in a statement. ‘‘We have signed another top-tier tenant in FedEx Ground, which saw the significant benefits of locating to this facility. In particular, companies are attracted to the building’s location and its access to all major highways in the area.’’

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August 1, 2007  
Liberty Lands FedEx for 90,000-SF Lease
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

WEST BRIDGEWATER, MA-This south suburban Boston community has been selected by Federal Express as the new home for a regional distribution center, as the global delivery firm will lease some 90,000 sf of industrial space at One United Dr. The relocation from neighboring Brockton represents a doubling in size for the company’s special FedEx Ground operation.
“We have signed a top-tier tenant in FedEx Ground, which saw the significant benefits of locating to this facility,” says Mohsin Amiji, CEO of the Liberty Cos. Amiji’s Boston-based real estate investment firm acquired the 315,000-sf One United Dr. in March 2006 for $11.9 million, and has set about repositioning it as a multi-tenanted complex. One United Dr. had been occupied for several years by United Liquors before that firm’s relocation.
Prior to the FedEx pact, SWB New England leased 80,000 sf at the property, leaving about 145,000 sf to be filled. Richards Barry Joyce & Partners is exclusive leasing agent for One United Dr., and brokers John Lashar, Paul Leone and Cal Hudak represented Liberty in the FedEx agreement. Agents for the tenant were Tom Byrd and Joe Pelle of Fischer & Co.
In unveiling the latest transaction, Amiji expressed confidence that the vacancy at One United Dr. will continue to decrease, citing the quality of the property, its leasing team and a centralized location that offers access to most major highways connecting to points in New England and the northeast. West Bridgewater is one of several South Shore communities that have become popular for distribution and warehouse operations, with RBJ estimating that the Interstate 495 submarket where West Bridgewater is situated has 16.2 million sf of industrial product. Of that, about 16.1% was vacant entering the third quarter, RBJ says in its mid-year indSTATus survey of regional market conditions.
The Liberty Cos. pursues a variety of product types for a portfolio focused on New England. Currently, the firm has more than five million sf of industrial, manufacturing, office and retail assets under management, and continues to look for “outside-the-box” opportunities, says Amiji.

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July 30, 2007  
Rents Soar in Tight Cambridge Office Market
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
CAMBRIDGE, MA-At the mid-year point of 2007, four trends are defining this city’s office market, according to a new report by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, and each spells trouble for the tenant camp. Besides a sharp rise in rents, RBJ director of research Brendan Carroll says the sublease outlet has virtually disappeared, and available office space of any ilk will be gone in the East Cambridge submarket by 2009. Meanwhile, the CRE inventory is consolidating, with a half-dozen players owning 50% of the city’s office and laboratory space. Five wield in excess of one million sf.
“There have been dramatic changes,” says Carroll, whose mid-year marketSTATus data shows a sudden gap between average asking rents for office space in Cambridge and those in the core suburban Waltham market. There a 22% difference overall, and the $42.10 per sf average for class A space in East Cambridge is 29% higher than that of Waltham. The two rates were comparable a year ago, and Waltham itself is setting suburban highs into the $40-per-sf range for newer product. Nonetheless, the chasm reflects nearly a $10 difference between Waltham and Cambridge. Carroll tells GlobeSt.com that at least two office buildings in East Cambridge are now quoting asking rents of $60 per sf as of this week, a first in the city since the brutal downturn that began the decade.
The shift reflects an improving economy and continued desire to sport an address carrying international cache, says Carroll, a point underscored by Microsoft Corp.’s new six-figure lease. That pact at One Memorial Dr. was second only to a 194,000-sf agreement by Monitor Corp. at 2 Canal Park, a deal initially reported by GlobeSt.com in May. Net absorption for the city’s 13.1 million sf of office space reached 178,000 sf in the second quarter, and is up 660,000 sf since mid-year 2006. That has dropped the vacancy rate to 8.4%, says RBJ. Presently, there are just four blocks of 50,000 sf or greater in Cambridge, marketSTATus shows, the largest 90,000 sf at One Rogers St.
“There are not an abundance of choices,” says Carroll. The unanticipated surge in demand comes after a period of shrinking inventory as landlords embraced the lucrative laboratory sector, one that can produce rents above $70 per sf and offers favorable operating advantages. Not only are owners of properties such as Technology Square refitting existing office space into laboratory, “it makes sense to view any development site for biotechnology,” says Carroll, leading to the dire predictions that all existing space will be gone in the prime East Cambridge district by the end of next year.
The technology bust that began in 2001 and lingered through 2005 had provided Cambridge tenants with the valuable sublease option, one that required landlords to remain competitive on direct deals. But while the sublease inventory was into the millions of sf, including substantial class A product, Carroll says Cambridge now has just two such opportunities to accommodate users needing even 5,000 sf. Sublease “used to be a major story, but now it is a non-factor,” he says.

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July 25, 2007  
Normandy Begins Upgrade of Marlborough Tech Park
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
MARLBOROUGH, MA-They may come for the price, but Normandy Real Estate Partners principal Justin Krebs is hoping that prospective tenants eyeing the Marlborough Technology Park will stay for the quality.
“You’ve got to be able to provide a great environment so people can enjoy coming to work,” Krebs tells GlobeSt.com in unveiling a multimillion-dollar overhaul of the seven-building, 579,000-sf property, an 85-acre complex Normandy secured last autumn in a 13-asset portfolio buy from Morgan Stanley Real Estate. “We are hearing loud and clear that amenities and a campus environment are highly desirable.”
In assessing the 16.8-million-sf Interstate 495 West office market, known commonly as the “Boroughs” for the ubiquitous municipal suffix used there, Krebs says he anticipates a migration from tighter, higher-priced areas closer in to Boston such as Route 128 Central and the Framingham/Natick markets that in good times often send demand westward. Typically, a delta of $8 per sf can launch such a stampede, says Krebs, and the Jones Lang LaSalle mid-year report indicates the spread now is a full $10 per sf. Route 128 Central asking prices are averaging $30.37 versus $20.30 per sf in the I-495 West corridor, says JLL.
Even in anticipating a rental break, tenants will expect a level of services and features at their new homes, maintains Krebs, especially since many uprooted had enjoyed the flight-to-quality element seen earlier this decade that allowed tenants to occupy high-end properties at bargain-basement rates. The improving economy is not only sending such firms packing, Krebs and Marlborough Technology Park leasing broker Paul Leone of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners say the need to recruit skilled employees mandates attractive workplaces.
“It’s an ultra-competitive hiring market, and you clearly need to have an edge,” says Leone, maintaining that Normandy “is doing all the right things” to position Marlborough Technology Park as one of the submarket’s premier assets. “It really is a flagship property for the Boroughs,” Leone relays, one he says his firm covets as a leasing assignment. Besides Leone, other members of the RBJ leasing team are principals John Lashar and Brian McKenzie.
Using a design from local architectural firm Cube 3 Studio LLC, Normandy is wasting little time pursuing its value-add strategy. The focal point right now is on Building 200, a centralized property that will incorporate many features being made available to tenants in the park, including a fitness center with showers and locker room; a full-service cafeteria; employee lounges; and an executive conference facility. “We’re in full swing,” says Krebs, who anticipates Building 200 will be completed by October and the remaining work will be wrapped up by early 2008. The Walsh Co. is acting as owner’s representative on the project, while Normandy is serving as on-site property manager. Other changes will include new signage and improved landscaping.
“They’ve got a great team in place,” says Leone, who reports encouraging interest in the complex, but no new deals to date. The park can accommodate requirements from 8,000 sf to 104,000 sf. The “sweet spot,” according to Leone, would be firms needing between 20,000 and 40,000 sf, but he predicts nearly anyone with a requirement “is going to take a hard look” at Marlborough Technology Park. Accessibility should be another lure, he says, with the complex on Nickerson Road close to the Massachusetts Turnpike, Interstate 290 and Route 9.
The I-495 West market was among the hardest hit areas during the regional recession, and has been among the slowest to recover, but Leone says he is enthused by the current level of velocity, although the summer slow season does appear to be at hand. After hitting 27.9% in the third quarter of 2003, the vacancy rate is now down to 17.3%, says RBJ, putting I-495 West below the rest of the I-495 market’s 21.0%. “There is some nice momentum now,” says Leone, a notion shared by Krebs. “We’re starting to see some strengthening of the rents and in the activity,” he says, adding, “We feel pretty good right now about the investment.”

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July 25, 2007
Despite vacancy, industrial market stable
Worcester Business Journal

Written by Matthew L. Brown   

Commercial real estate broker Richards Barry Joyce & Partners says the market for warehouse and manufacturing properties is stable despite relatively high vacancy during the second quarter.

According to an RBJ industrial market status report, vacancy among warehouse properties along I-495 stood at 17.1 percent at the end of the second quarter.

Contributing to that rate was a 21.3 percent vacancy rate around what RBJ calls the western section of I-495.

Manufacturing properties around I-495 were 22.5 percent vacant by the end of the quarter, RBJ said, with the I-495 South claiming 35.6 percent vacancy.

Throughout the greater Boston area, warehouse and manufacturing tenants left a total of 131,000 square feet of space during the second quarter, RBJ said.

The strongest area for the industrial market during the quarter was the Route 128 south area, which has seen four straight quarters of demand, 8 percent vacancy and landlords raising rents 21 percent in the last year, RBJ said.

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July 22, 2007
Area office market heating up
Lowell Sun

By Tom Spoth, tspoth@lowellsun.com

Deterred by scarce office space and skyrocketing rents in Boston, Cambridge and Waltham, commercial tenants have begun scouring Greater Lowell for cheap real estate.

Burlington and Billerica have been the most prominent beneficiaries so far, but the I-495, Route 3 and Route 128 corridors are all starting to reap the benefits of a newly potent economy, experts say.

"You can get significant savings by looking in the suburbs instead of feeling that you need to be in Kendall Square," said Mary Kelly, senior vice president of research at the Boston real-estate firm Meredith & Grew.

The commercial real-estate market in Greater Boston is very strong overall, according to recent data from another Hub real-estate company, Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. The firm found that vacancy rates dropped from 15.2 percent to 14.3 percent in the second quarter of 2007 -- the sixth straight quarter the percentage has dropped -- and average lease rates rose 89 cents per square foot to $38.58.

The company's report stated that north of Boston, "the epicenter of demand may have shifted from supply-constrained Waltham to Billerica, Burlington and Lexington."

Burlington is one of the strongest markets in the region due to supply constraints in the Boston area and the town's strategic location at the confluence of Routes 128 and 3. Tenants are flocking to Burlington so rapidly that the town's commercial space will be entirely full by 2010 if it continues at its current pace, according to RBJ.

The region's strong defense and biotechnology sectors have continued to expand and the resurgent high-tech and software industries are also starting to seek space. With high-profile tenants such as Microsoft and Google setting up shop in Cambridge's Kendall Square, buildings that were being leased for $34 per square foot just a year ago now command nearly $70, according to RBJ. In Burlington, rents are still in the $30 range, Kelly said, and RBJ pegs the average rent for high-quality office space in the I-495 region at $21.39.

That disparity has led high-profile tenants to take a look at Greater Lowell.

Billerica recently saw Raytheon Co. expand its presence in town to 75,000 square feet, while high-tech firm Luminus Devices is moving its headquarters to Billerica from Woburn and opening a 48,000-square-foot office.

Billerica Principal Assessor Rich Scanlon said the town is gaining a strong reputation in the biotech and alternative-energy sectors. The recent expansion of Route 3 to six lanes and the uptick in economic activity have led to Billerica's success, he said.

"I think it's been a slow turnaround, but it is turning," Scanlon said. "I think Billerica has a bright future."

In Lowell, the commercial vacancy rate has plummeted to 12.6 percent from 32 percent in one year, according to Brendan Carroll, RBJ's vice president of research. The dramatic drop has been largely fueled by a resurgence at the Cross Point towers, where new tenants Motorola, Sterling Commerce and Corning Life Sciences are taking up significant chunks of space and credit-card processing firm Litle & Co. recently announced it would expand its presence in the towers to nearly 30,000 square feet.

Westford is also starting to feel a lift from the rising tide. Just this month, two companies -- shoe maker Puma North America and software company Red Hat Inc. -- have moved forward with significant expansions in town.

West of I-495, Devens is making great strides in the commercial realm, enticing biopharmaceutical behemoth Bristol-Myers Squibb and several other smaller firms to set up shop at the former military base. Devens is something of an anomaly because it has a significant amount of buildable land and has attracted new construction as well as absorption of existing office space.

New commercial buildings have been few and far between in Greater Boston because so much existing real estate was empty. However, that could soon change if vacancy rates continue to fall, according to James Lipscomb, who represents the I-495 North market for RBJ.

"There's not much new construction, but (companies) may have to look at it again in the near future," Lipscomb said. "But rents still have to rise a bit before that."

The I-495 North region rose $1.14 per square foot (5.6 percent) in the second quarter as the vacancy rate declined 0.8 percent to 21 percent, according to RBJ.

Kelly said Meredith & Grew's research shows rents in the I-495 North area hovering around $20, but prices will likely continue to increase because demand for space remains high.

Dave Tibbetts, general counsel for the Merrimack Valley Economic Development Council, cited Nuvera Fuel Cells' move from Cambridge to Billerica, as well as Schott Solar's decision to keep a manufacturing plant in Billerica after stating that the facility might close, as strong indicators that the Merrimack Valley is on the upswing. The region also has a healthy cluster in the biotech field, which is expected to enjoy strong growth in the coming years, Tibbetts noted.

He added that some office buildings -- in Chelmsford, Billerica, Tewksbury, and Tyngsboro, for instance -- are still waiting for tenants.

"The Route 3 corridor is still ripe for some development," Tibbetts said.

The window of opportunity may be closing, though.

"We have a good challenge to deal with now," Tibbetts said. "We're actually running out of good, available office space."

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July 19, 2007
Luminus Devices to sublease space at 1100 Technology Park
Boston Business Journal

Luminus Devices Inc. will sublease 46,000 square feet from GE Sensing at 1100 Technology Park.

The building at 1100 Technology Park is 239,903 square feet and is located in Billerica, Mass. GE Sensing (NYSE: GE) remains in slightly less than 200,000 square feet at 1100 Technology Park.

Luminus Devices, which develops and manufactures light emitting devices and systems for the television market, is expanding from Woburn, Mass., where it leases 20,000 square feet from Cummings Properties LLC. Luminus uses the Woburn location primarily as fabrication center. The company plans to use the second and third floors of the Billerica location as office, R&D, and administrative space.

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC represented Luminus Devices and the sublandlord, GE Sensing was represented by Cushman & Wakefield of Massachusetts Inc. in the lease transaction. The primary landlord of the building is Beacon Properties Corp.

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July 18, 2007
Hub’s office market gets hot: Brokers predict space shortage as towers fill up
Boston Herald

By Scott Van Voorhis

The Boston area’s office market is on a roll not seen since the late 1990s boom - a key sign the local economy is finally starting to heat up, experts say.
Local companies occupied more than 5 million square feet of previously empty space in the year ending June 30 - the most since the last office boom peaked back in 2000, Richards Barry Joyce and Partners reports.
The big appetite for more office space on the part of companies ranging from Cambridge tech outfits to downtown law firms reflects an increase in hiring, said John Bitner, chief economist at Eastern Bank.
Overall, the state’s unemployment rate is hovering around 5 percent, a little above the national average of 4.5 percent but much better than after the 2001 recession.
Developers are taking note and laying plans for new office towers in Boston amid predictions of an impending shortage of office space.
 “When you occupy more space, you are doing so to put more people in,” Bitner said. “I think that is a good indicator we are seeing more job growth.”
 Leading the way are some of the area’s economic hot spots, such as Boston’s Financial District and Back Bay, East Cambridge with its constellation of tech and biotech firms near MIT, and major surburban office hubs like Waltham and Burlington.
These markets are so hot that, given the current pace of expansion, they will virtually run out of available space in the next two and a half years, according to Richards Barry.
The dearth of office space can be seen especially in downtown Boston towers.
There now is only one available block of office space in the 50,000-square-foot range - roughly two floors - above the 20th floor in Boston’s office towers, said Brendan Carroll, research director at Richards Barry.
Demand for office space is also soaring in Cambridge, where Microsoft Corp. recently inked a deal for 136,000 square feet at One Memorial Drive overlooking the Charles River near MIT.
Top East Cambridge corporate suites are now being marketed at nearly $70 a square foot - double what such offices rented out for just a year ago, Richards Barry reported.
 “There is an impending space shortage,” said Carroll of Richards Barry.

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July 18, 2007
Luminus Secures 46,000-SF Sublease in Billerica
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

BILLERICA, MA-Taking another piece of sublease space off the suburban Boston office market, Luminus Devices has committed to 46,000 sf at 1100 Technology Park here. Luminus will occupy the middle and top floors of the three-story building, space controlled by tenant GE Sensing, a division of GE that concentrates on development of measurement and sensory equipment.
Although the ubiquitous swapping of facilities that occurred earlier this decade as a result of the regional recession has become increasingly rare in suburban Boston, Richards Barry Joyce & Partners principal Jonathan Varholak says the process remains a viable alternative in the Route 128 North submarket given a concentration of technology firms. “Subleasing arrangements between two high-tech companies are not unusual because the building set-up and infrastructure have already been optimized for similar uses,” explains Varholak, who represented Luminus in structuring the sublease along with partner John Wilson. Torin Taylor of Cushman & Wakefield acted on behalf of GE Sensing.
Although Route 128 North was among the best performers among office submarkets to begin 2007, RBJ research indicates the vacancy rate remains alarmingly high at 23%, with only the Interstate 495 submarket’s 26.3% above that mark. RBJ director of research Brendan Carroll does, however, note in his mid-year report that Route 128 North has enjoyed 900,000 sf of positive absorption in the past 12 months, including 316,000 sf during the second quarter. That figure was tops among all suburban Boston office submarkets, while Carroll also reports that class A rental rates have accelerated by 12% in the 24.1-million-sf Route 128 North office district during the past four quarters.

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Thursday, July 12, 2007
Report: Hub office market is strengthening
Boston Globe / Boston.com

The Greater Boston office market showed continued signs of strengthening in the second quarter, with vacancy rates dropping 0.9 percent to 14.3 percent and the average asking lease rates rising 89 cents to $38.58 per square foot.

That's the headline from a new report from Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, a full-service commercial real estate firm.

The firm released its findings in a report titled officeSTATus - Greater Boston Summer 2007.

"Greater Boston's office market is very strong as of the close of the second quarter," RBJ vice president of research Brendan Carroll said in a statement. "And while certain areas are certainly stronger than others, we are really seeing positive indicators in all segments of the market. We're still not at historic rates for vacancy and absorption, but we are continuing in that direction."

(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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July 11, 2007
Office vacancy down, rents up around 495
Worcester Business Journal

Written by Matthew L. Brown   

With little office space available around Route 128, occupancy may continue to grow in "the boroughs," and that growth may have staying power, according to Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.

The Boston-based commercial real estate firm released its summer 2007 office market status report recently. It said office landlords have been able to push up rents by between $2 and $5 this quarter.

Office space in the boroughs has strung together six consecutive quarters of positive absorption, RBJ said. However, that area did the same thing before it flopped in 2004.

But RBJ said the boroughs could continue to fill office space, and that office space may remain occupied if space around Route 128 remains scarce.

RBJ said the area around the southern end of I-495 may be the next to see an explosion of office space development. The area currently has only 2.1 million square feet of office space, but there are office developments either in the works, or on the drawing board, RBJ said.

According to RBJ, the Class A office space vacancy rate for the I-495 area decreased by 0.8 percent to 21 percent in the second quarter. Asking rents in the area increased by $1.14 to $21.39 per square foot.

Office vacancy in I-495 West was at 17.3 percent for the quarter, and the higher asking rates for the entire I-495 corridor were driven by I-495 North, where lease rates increased by 22 percent over the last three quarters, RBJ said.

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July 10, 2007
Boston Office Market Hottest Since 2003
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements
BOSTON-Global warming has nothing on this city’s office market, or so it would seem in a mid-year report released today by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners that shows positive absorption of near-record levels during the second quarter and continued rental accretion. RBJ’s overview also shows Boston’s recovery is spreading out as prime locations approach full occupancy.
“The numbers are big,” RBJ director of research Brendan Carroll tells GlobeSt.com, with 1.6 million sf of positive absorption between April and mid-year. That marks the sixth straight quarter of positive absorption, and the 5.1 million sf absorbed since halfway through 2006 is the most for any such period since 2001. “The metrics look good just about everywhere,” says Carroll, whose Boston-based firm tracked 630,000 sf of positive absorption in the city during the quarter, with 315,000-sf of that occurring in the Back Bay District, now among the strongest office markets in the country.
Besides the standard mid-year review, RBJ issued a special look dissecting office market trends since conditions began improving four years ago after the brutal recession that started the decade. Since the third quarter of 2003, a limited number of submarkets have enjoyed the lion’s share of leasing activity and rental rate gains, discloses RBJ, which refers to the top performers as the “hot markets.” They include Class A space in Boston’s Financial District and Back Bay, plus all categories of office product in East Cambridge, Burlington, Waltham and Woburn.
Collectively, the hot markets account for 60.2 million sf, compared to 111 million sf in the remaining areas. Since Q3 2003, the hot markets have seen their vacancy rate decline from 21.1% to 9.6%, whereas the larger pool has only experienced a dip from 19.6% to 16.8%. That means 69% of all leasing in metropolitan Boston has been done in the “hot markets,” says Carroll, which account for just 35% of the inventory. There has been 8.4 million sf of absorption since 2003 in the hot markets versus 4.5 million sf for the remainder.
“The numbers are very telling,” says Carroll, although he also stresses that the recovery is finally spreading, partly a reflection of the wider geographic gap between asking rents, but also due to a dwindling level of inventory in the best areas. Waltham has 88% of the region’s office product under construction within its boundaries, but Carroll says that community and Burlington are still poised to run out of space by 2010.
“If the volume of demand continues as we’ve seen it, we may very well have the dynamics necessary for both new construction and more absorption in adjacent areas,” says Carroll. Indeed, “it is already happening,” he says, noting that the western suburban district commonly known as “the Boroughs” has posted nearly 600,000-sf of positive absorption in the past four quarters, while the Route 128 South market had 235,000-sf in that period. That result is impressive, says Carroll, given that the office space inventory in such communities as Canton, Dedham, Norwood and Westwood is just 3.7 million sf. “That’s a submarket likely to grow in the near future,” he says of Route 128 South, with the developers of Westwood Station proposing a 120,000-sf office building. During the period from Q3 2003, there has been 3.1 million sf added in the hot markets, whereas the remaining supply has remained flat, posting a slight decline of 39,000 sf.
As for second quarter results, the Back Bay’s performance on absorption was only outdone by the Route 128 North office market’s 316,000 sf total, followed by 275,000-sf for Route 128 West, the core suburban market anchored by Waltham. Only four of the submarkets had negative results for the quarter, with the suburban absorption total positive by 800,000 sf. The suburban vacancy rate is now 18.8% compared to 11.9% in Cambridge and 10.4% for Boston, says RBJ.
As with other indices, the Back Bay did the best on vacancy in Boston at 8.8%, and RBJ reports that the 12.1 million sf submarket is now highest in the region on office rents given rate appreciation of stratospheric proportions. Since mid-year 2006, Back Bay average rents have risen above $56 per sf, a 56% increase in just one year, while the Financial District has seen a 40% gain and East Cambridge is more than 33% higher than a year ago. The average for Class A rents throughout Greater Boston is now $38.58 per sf., highest since the second quarter of 2003, according to RBJ’s review.

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Thursday, June 28, 2007
FedEx renews Northborough lease
Boston Business Journal

FedEx SmartPost renewed its lease for 180,200 square feet of warehouse and distribution space at One Beeman Road where the company has been located since 2001.

The building is a 342,900-square-foot facility located in Northborough, Mass., owned by MM Industrial Beeman Road LLC. FedEx SmartPost, a part of the FedEx Corp. (NYSE:FDX), specializes in the consolidation and delivery of high volumes of low-weight, less time sensitive business-to-consumer packages using the United States Postal Service for final delivery to residences.

One Beeman Road is fully leased to other tenants Sundance Publishing and Recall Corp., according to Richard Barry Joyce & Partners LLC which represented the landlord in the FedEx transaction. Fischer & Co. represented FedEx in its lease. Rents were not disclosed.

The facility, which offers 22' to 30' ceilings and provides rail access, was perfect for FedEx, said Paul Leone, vice president of Richards Barry Joyce, in a statement.

"The building's central location and design suits the tenant's operational and regional distribution needs very well," Leone said. "Additionally, this lease renewal allowed both parties to extend what has been a very good business relationship."

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June 27, 2007
FedEx Signs Renewal for 180,000 SF
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

NORTHBOROUGH, MA-In one of the largest industrial leases of 2007, a specialty division of Federal Express has renewed for more than 180,000-sf at One Beeman Rd. The 343,000-sf distribution facility is owned by MM Industrial Beeman Road LLC, an entity managed by TA Realty Associates of Boston.

Broker Paul Leone says the five-year agreement underscores “a very good business relationship” between MM and FedEx, which operates a SmartPost division from the facility. SmartPost matriculates business-to-consumer packages that are low weight and less time sensitive than other mail. The idea includes use of the United States Postal Service for final delivery.

“One Beeman Rd. is an excellent match for FedEx SmartPost,” says Leone. A VP at Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, Leone teamed with RBJ principal John Lashar as exclusive leasing agents to negotiate terms on behalf of the landlord. Kirk Bittel of Fischer & Co. brokered the deal for FedEx.

TA Realty Associates secured One Beeman Rd. in 2005 for $21.4 million. Among the attributes mentioned by Leone are ceiling heights reaching 30 feet, a dimension usually reserved for newer properties. One Beeman Rd. is at full occupancy and commands top market rents even with its 25th anniversary looming in 2008 and speculative industrial space being heaped upon the region in the past two years. One Beeman Rd. “has held up very well and will continue to be a good asset for the ownership,” says Leone. The extension with FedEx, a group known for its sophisticated analysis of CRE operations, is a testimony to One Beeman Rd.’s functionality, he offers.

FedEx also occupies space at Invesco Real Estate’s 260,000-sf 55 Lyman St. in Northborough, one of the new spec projects that is located less than a half-mile from One Beeman Rd. That FedEx endorsement, says Leone, further validates the community and the Interstate 495 West warehouse market. The namesake roadway provides connections to every New England state, and nearby Route 9 and the Massachusetts Turnpike also intersect the region, enhancing east/west market coverage. “There’s a critical mass of space, and it has to do with where [I-495 West] is situated,” concurs Leone. Efficiency is especially desired given rising fuel costs, he says, further benefiting Northborough. The I-495 West warehouse submarket consists of 6.79 million sf, making it among New England’s largest industrial enclaves after southern Massachusetts.

According to RBJ director of research Brendan Carroll, I-495 West has a 20.7% vacancy rate. Leone, however, maintains that the empty space is in older industrial buildings whose constitution is either not large enough or would require extensive investment to revitalize. The newer inventory for I-495 West has a vacancy rate in the single digits, Leone says, and the leasing environment appears to be healthy going into the mid-year.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2007
FedEx renews Northborough lease
Boston.com / Boston Globe

FedEx SmartPost Inc. has renewed its lease on a large Northborough warehouse, a broker involved in the transaction said.

The broker is Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, a Boston-based full-service commercial real estate advisory firm.

Richards Barry Joyce said it represented the property's landlord, MM Industrial Beeman Road LLC.

The warehouse at One Beeman Rd. is has 342,900 square feet of space and active rail access; the FedEx lease renewal is for 180,200 square feet, Richards Barry Joyce said.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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Tuesday, 26 June 2007
FedEx renews Beeman Road lease
Worcester Business Journal 

FedEx SmartPost Inc. has renewed its 180,200-square-foot lease at One Beeman Road in Northborough.

The property's landlord is MM Industrial Beeman Road LLC. MM Industrial was represented by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.

The building is a 342,900-square-foot warehouse and distribution building. The facility offers high ceilings and provides active rail access.

FedEx SmartPost uses the building as a warehouse and distribution facility. FedEx SmartPost, part of FedEx Corp., specializes in the consolidation and delivery of high volumes of low-weight, less time sensitive business-to-consumer packages using the United States Postal Service for final delivery to residences.

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June 21, 2007
Wyeth Leases 49,000 SF at Ballardvale Office Park
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

WILMINGTON, MA-A repositioned commercial development here has landed a key tenant, with pharmaceutical giant Wyeth Inc. committing to more than 49,000 sf at the Ballardvale Office Park in a lease renewal and expansion. The four-building complex is owned by a partnership of AEW Capital Management and Griffith Properties LLC.

“The park offers a first-class environment, which is attractive to companies of all sizes,” broker Brian McKenzie of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners says in explaining reasons he believes Wyeth chose to stay at BOP after reviewing various nearby options. A generous amenity package, visibility to Interstate 93 and direct access to that roadway and nearby I-95 and I-495 are other attributes, says McKenzie, whose firm is exclusive leasing agent for the park.

Griffith initially secured ownership of two buildings in 2004, buying them in partnership with the Praedium Group before an opportunity came up to acquire two adjacent properties. When Praedium hesitated to pursue the second investment, AEW agreed to replace the capital source and create the office park, which now features 550,000 sf of first class suburban space. Several million dollars have been spent to unify the buildings and to upgrade aesthetics and mechanical systems.

As part of the just-completed lease renewal, Wyeth will relocate from BOP’s Building Three to Building One, a 200,000-sf property closest to I-93. There is also a full-service cafeteria and large seating area featuring a wide-screen television and WiFi access, as well as a fitness facility and locker room. McKenzie and RBJ VP James Lipscomb handled negotiations for the landlord, while Wyeth was represented by RBJ principal John Wilson and Tom McCann, SVP, of the Garibaldi Group.

The Wyeth transaction is helping round out an active second quarter for the I-93 North office submarket, among the hardest hit during the regional recession as many tenants flocked to Route 128 or other locations close to Boston and the suburban core. Founded by Boston real estate veteran J. Brad Griffith, Boston-based Griffith Properties LLC was among the first firms to anticipate the recovering Massachusetts economy would lead to rental hikes in centralized markets and create a niche for communities on the fringe such as Wilmington.

Mid-year numbers are expected to begin pouring in later this week, but signs of life on I-93 North are already apparent, with several sizeable deals signed in recent weeks at the Brickstone Square Office Park in nearby Andover. Sources say BOP may also be close to announcing additional leases, but the Wyeth pact is the only one being publicly discussed thus far.

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June 20, 2007
VinCo Lands Med Tech Firm for 46,000 SF
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

SHREWSBURY, MA-A lease here on a mix of lab and office space accounts for more than half the available space at 800 Boston Turnpike Rd., an 80,000-sf mixed-use facility owned by VinCo Properties. Valeritas LLC, a medical technologies firm focused on the diabetes field, will take 46,000 sf in the property, having opted to relocate from 155 Flanders Rd. in abutting Westborough.

“We are pleased to have attracted an excellent tenant,” says VinCo Properties president Vince O’Neill. The presence of lab facilities in the single-story building helped secure the Valeritas commitment, O’Neill maintains, as did “terrific visibility” in fronting Route 9, aka Boston Turnpike Road, one of the main east/west business corridors in New England. VinCo acquired the development in December 2005 for $3.9 million. Besides the laboratory and office product, 800 Boston Turnpike Rd. also offers manufacturing/warehouse space.

According to Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, the facility has about 34,000 sf available, but did not indicate what type of product that represents. A full-service real estate services firm, Boston-based RBJ is exclusive leasing agent for the building, and negotiated terms for both parties in the Valeritas agreement. Principals John Lashar and Brian McKenzie joined RBJ VP Paul Leone in handling the lease on behalf of the landlord, while Lashar and Leone also assisted the tenant. The property is owned by a VinCo affiliate, the Taming of the Shrewsbury LLC.

Shrewsbury is located in the Interstate 495 West region, a submarket that has 16.7 million sf of office space, according to RBJ’s first-quarter 2007 industry survey. The vacancy rate stood at 17.9%, but an increase of activity has many observers anticipating a substantial drop in that indicator by the mid-year point.

VinCo’s Shrewsbury investment is among more than a half-dozen commercial assets owned by the company in Massachusetts. Others are located in Bedford, Brockton, Brookline, Foxborough, Wilmington and Woburn.

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June 13, 2007
Xcellerex to remain, expand in Marlborough
Boston Business Journal

Xcellerex Inc. renewed its lease with Davis Marcus Partners Inc. and will expand the headquarters location by about 21,000 square feet.
The company, which provides contract services for biotech companies looking to develop and manufacture drugs and vaccines, signed a lease for 60,885 square feet at 150-170 Locke Drive in Marlborough, Mass. As part of the lease terms, Xcellerex will occupy an additional 20,885 additional square feet in the 120,000-square-foot office, manufacturing and R&D building.
"By expanding its presence at 150-170 Locke Drive, Xcellerex has satisfied its need for additional space while avoiding the sacrifice of operational efficiencies that often accompany a corporate move," said Paul Leone, a vice president at Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC.
Richards Barry Joyce & Partners represented both the tenant and landlord in the transaction. The building at 150-170 Locke Drive is fully leased. The Route 495 market is consists of 16.7 million square feet and was about 17.9 percent vacant at the end of the first quarter, according to Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.

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June 12, 2007
Manufacturer expands corporate HQ
Worcester Business Journal

Written by Matthew L. Brown   

Xcellerex Inc. has expanded its Marlborough corporate headquarters by 20,885 square feet.

The company now occupies 60,885 square feet at 150-170 Lock Dr., and the 120,000-square-foot building is now completely occupied, according to Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC of Boston, the property's broker.

The building is owned by Davis Marcus Partners.

The building is a mix of office, manufacturing and research and development space.

RBJ brokers said Xcellerex, a biotechnology manufacturing company, had satisfied its need for additional space, and avoided "the sacrifice of operational efficiencies that often accompany a corporate move."

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June 4, 2007 
Richards Barry Joyce Bolsters Brokerage Team
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

BOSTON-As Richards Barry Joyce & Partners begins its seventh year in business, the commercial real estate services firm has added two new brokers, beefing up coverage in the central Route 128 and Cambridge markets. Former Jones Lang LaSalle VP Jay Nugent will focus on the suburban territory, while Eric Smith is joining the Cambridge team led by Steve Purpura and RBJ president Robert Richards.

“We’re excited about it,” Richards tells GlobeSt.com of the additions, which were announced along with several promotions. Among those moving up the RBJ ladder are Kristin Connelly to director of national accounts and Brian Connelly to associate vice president, while Chris McCauley was named VP and Brendan Carroll has been appointed VP of research. Renee Twerago is now VP of finance and administration, Robert Byrne was named an associate and Samantha Bullock is the new manager of information technology.

The two brokerage hires are a bit out of character for RBJ’s typical recruitment philosophy, says Richards, having generally favored prospects inexperienced in real estate because the company wants to train them for a system that eschews commissions as a way of encouraging teamwork. Not only is RBJ now among the top commercial real estate firms in the region based on square footage represented, it was also recently ranked as the leader in productivity per broker. “It’s a proven formula,” maintains Richards, and Nugent embraces the RBJ model after being at commission shops Grubb & Ellis and most recently Jones Lang LaSalle.

“There’s no question that their approach to the business is different than other firms and better for the client,” says Nugent, who watched as RBJ burst on the local scene in June 2001 after eight industry professionals from national firms joined Richards to take on heavyweights such as CBRE/New England, Cushman & Wakefield and the erstwhile Trammell Crow Co. “When you look at what they have accomplished, it’s amazing,” says Nugent. RBJ is prevalent in every Massachusetts market and today services clients both nationally and internationally, overcoming the unfortunate timing of starting just months before the US terrorist attacks and a subsequent economic slump still dogging New England.

Nugent and Smith have both impressed RBJ in the early stages of their careers, says Richards, with Smith coming over from CBRE/New England. “Jay and Eric each bring to RBJ a unique set of strengths that will help us advance our tenant and landlord clients’ business goals,” says Richards, praising the pair as “all-stars who will make an immediate impact on RBJ and, more importantly, our client partners.”

During his six-year career, Nugent has been involved in the leasing and disposition of more than four million sf of space, with clients including Comcast, MRO Software, GPC Biotech, ING Clarion, Normandy Real Estate and Saracen Properties. A graduate of Arizona State, Nugent has focused on the Waltham leasing market, and joins RBJ as a VP.

Smith’s tenure has been spent representing such firms as Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Boston Properties, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Gene Network Sciences. The University of Vermont graduate also worked on the international sales team for NOSC Corp. Smith joins the Cambridge operation as an AVP.

Besides the new players, Richards also commended the matriculation of the seven in-house staffers, promotions he said underscore their contributions to the company’s success. Carroll, for example, has produced research that not only helps tenants and landlords, but has earned national attention. Carroll, says Richards, “has done a great job for us and we wanted to recognize his performance.”

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May 31, 2007
Colony Scores 620,000-SF Portfolio
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

FRANKLIN, MA-A portfolio of flex/industrial real estate offering the cache and heft to attract institutional capital has changed hands. Boston-based pension fund advisor Colony Realty Partners bought the half-dozen buildings in the Forge Park business complex from a client of UBS Global Asset Management, acquiring a block of 620,000 sf.

“We had a remarkable amount of interest,” Richards Barry Joyce & Partners EVP Richard Herlihy tells GlobeSt.com after the firm’s investment sales team orchestrated the transaction. The “hotly contested” product resulted in an expeditious marketing and due diligence phase, explains Herlihy, who was joined in brokering the sale by RBJ colleagues Richard Bradbury, John Lashar and Paul Leone. A Boston-based real estate services firm, RBJ represented the seller and procured the buyer.

Registry of deeds records put the price at just under $68 million, or about $110 per sf. “I think everyone was happy,” was all Herlihy would say on that aspect, declining to discuss financial details due to confidentiality agreements. The investment sales specialist did cite several factors that enhanced the competition, including a series of infrastructure improvements near Forge Park that have created wider roadways, turning lanes, a streamlined truck route and even a new overpass.

Forge Park “is much more accessible,” thanks to the upgrades, says Herlihy. The master-planned development impressed suitors as well, he says, given its stature as one of the premier business campuses in the Interstate 495 South market. The sale encompassed 8, 9, 10, 15, 20 and 22 Forge Park, which were constructed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Three are flex buildings, and the remainder house distribution services. Credit tenants include Draka, General Cable, National Grid and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Occupancy of the portfolio is estimated at 75%.

The Forge Park disposition is just the latest commercial real estate sale tendered in recent months by RBJ’s investment team, which also traded two major industrial buildings at the former Fort Devens; 268 Summer St. in Boston’s Fort Point Channel; and 70 Innerbelt Rd. in Somerville, a hybrid of telecom and warehouse space. That $32-million sale to the Carlyle Group was reported by GlobeSt.com earlier this month.

The Interstate 495 South flex market has been relatively steady, according to Brendan Carroll, RBJ’s vice president of research. The vacancy rate at the end of the first quarter was 13.3%, Carroll reports, placing the mark up slightly from the 12.9% posted one year earlier.

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May 30, 2007
Forge Park industrial property portfolio sold for $67.8 million
MetroWest Daily News

By Greg Turner/Daily News staff

Franklin - A Boston real estate investor has picked up a six-building portfolio at Forge Park, a broker involved in the deal announced Tuesday.

Colony Realty Partners LLC purchased three flex buildings and three warehouses totaling 619,374 square feet at 8, 9, 10, 15, 20 and 22 Forge Parkway, according to Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC.

The seller was UBS Global Asset Management of Hartford, Conn.

The announcement did not include the sale price but real estate records show the transaction was valued at about $67.8 million.

Forge Park, located along Rte. 140 near Interstate 495 in Franklin, is one of the region's more prominent industrial parks. The entire development has 20 buildings totaling 2.7 million square feet.

"The sale of the park was hotly contested by some of the market's premier institutional investors due to its size, quality and credit tenancy,'' said Richard Herlihy, executive vice president at RBJ, in a statement.

The portfolio is 75 percent leased with tenants including General Cable Corp., National Grid USA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. and Draka Comteq USA Inc.

Officials at Colony Realty, which invests in small and medium-size commercial properties nationwide, could not be reached for comment.

(Greg Turner can be reached at gturner@cnc.com or 508-626-3909.)

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May 22, 2007
Invesco Tenant Renews, Expands to 116,000 SF
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

WESTBOROUGH, MA-In a transaction that brings the property to full occupancy, WorkflowOne Inc. has leased 116,000 sf at 1-5 Sassacus Dr. The pact is a renewal and expansion more than doubling the firm’s presence in the 165,000-sf building. The remainder is leased to Relizon, a business communications company.

Both deals were struck under the stewardship of Invesco Realty Advisors, which has owned 1-5 Sassacus Dr. since 2000. Consummated in 2004, the 51,000-sf Relizon lease even featured the same brokerage firms in Richards Barry Joyce & Partners representing the Dallas-based landlord and Cresa Partners bringing in the two tenants. Cresa VP David Ross from the firm’s Boston office and colleague David Reinhart were involved in both leases. RBJ principal John Lashar, who also negotiated the Relizon lease for Invesco, was on that end again in the WorkflowOne lease, joined in the latest deal by RBJ VP Paul Leone.

Constructed in 1989, 1-5 Sassacus Dr. has a mix of office and industrial space. The property has quick access to major roadways including Interstate 495, the Massachusetts Turnpike and Route 9. The lease to WorkflowOne is among the largest in the I-495/Mass Pike submarket this year, with others including Valeritas taking 46,000 sf at 800 Turnpike Rd. in Shrewsbury; Datavantage leasing 27,000 sf at 1800 West Park Dr. in Westborough; and a pair of 17,000-sf leases, one by Systems Maintenance Services in Hudson and another by Boston Scientific Corp. in Natick.

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May 18, 2007
Carlyle Group buys warehouse for $32.2M
Boston Business Journal

ING Clarion sold a 276,302-square-foot warehouse building to the Carlyle Group for $32.2 million, or about $116 per square foot.
The building is located at 70 Innerbelt Road in Somerville, Mass., and was 80 percent leased at the time of the sale. Tenants in the building include Internap Network Services Corp., Hannaford Bros. Co. and the Museum of Fine Arts. There is 50,000 square feet of vacant space available for lease at 70 Innerbelt.
Boston-based Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC represented the seller and the buyer in the sale transaction. Richards Barry Joyce & Partners is also the exclusive leasing agent for the building.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Carlyle Group buys Somerville building
Boston Globe / Boston.com

The Carlyle Group purchased a hybrid warehouse building in Somerville for $32.25 million from ING Clarion, a broker involved in the transaction said today.

The broker is Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, a Boston-based commercial real estate services firm.

Richards Barry Joyce represented ING Clarion, a real estate management and advisory services firm with offices in New York.

The building, at 70 Innerbelt Road, has 276,302 square feet of space and is more than 80 percent leased, Richards Barry Joyce said.

The Carlyle Group is a private equity firm with offices in Washington, D.C.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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May 14, 2007
Carlyle Buys 70 Innerbelt Rd. for $32M
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

SOMERVILLE, MA-Completing a deal broker Richard Bradbury terms “a perfect fit,” the Carlyle Group has paid $32.3 million for 70 Innerbelt Rd., a blend of telecom and warehouse space sited on the edge of Cambridge and Downtown Boston. While somewhat diverse, the mixed-use plays into two specialties Carlyle is adept at, according to Bradbury, a member of the Richards Barry Joyce & Partners investment team who represented seller ING Clarion and procured the buyer with colleagues Richard Herlihy and Steve Purpura.

A private equity firm based in Washington, DC, Carlyle “saw a recovering industrial market and a recovering telecom market, and they identified [70 Innerbelt] as a perfect fit to take advantage of both,” Bradbury tells GlobeSt.com. The chief tenant, Internap Network Services Corp., has fared well after a bumpy beginning, and Bradbury credits ING Clarion for sticking with the tenant early on and assisting in their build out, space now fetching $20 per sf. That investment provided an attractive element in marketing the asset, says Bradbury, who reports 10 final offers and a late-minute showdown between the victors and another firm whose focus is on telecom.

“That was a pretty fierce competition, but in the end, [Carlyle’s industrial knowledge] made the difference that let them pay what they needed to get it done,” says Bradbury. The warehouse component is leased to a grocery chain that no longer needs the space but is nonetheless paying rent. That rate is in the $7-per-sf range, but Bradbury says analysis shows by being a product type in short supply close in to Boston could allow future deals to approach $10 per sf. The assistance of Purpura, a leasing specialist, allowed RBJ to provide bidders relevant market data to assess the potential, explains Bradbury. “We were very happy with the response,” says Bradbury, whose firm has negotiated several substantial sales to date in 2007.

“We’re getting our fair share,” acknowledged Bradbury, whose team orchestrated the $43.7-million sale of 734,000 sf of industrial space at the former Devens Industrial Park in central Massachusetts, and last month brokered the disposition of 268 Summer St. in Boston’s Fort Point Channel to Aegean Capital, a deal initially reported by GlobeSt.com. The RBJ sales team is about to take on several new assignments, says Bradbury.

As for 70 Innerbelt Rd., Bradbury says the telecom market has produced survivors such as Internap able to wait out the technology crash that began early in the decade. That demise came after a brief run-up of telecom real estate throughout Greater Boston that led to redevelopment of Innerbelt Road. Some ventures proved complete busts, most notably the Cabot, Cabot & Forbes warehouse-to-telecom conversion in Boston’s Allston district, and Innerbelt Road took its own hit prior to ING’s arrival. Besides deft management by that entity, Bradbury says 70 Innerbelt Rd. prevailed as a telecom project thanks to solid fundamentals such as heavy load bearing floors, multiple fiber optic feeds, extra electrical power and back-up generator capacity.

Presently, 70 Innerbelt Rd. is 80% leased, with tenants including the Museum of Fine Arts and Hannaford Brothers, the grocery chain. RBJ is also exclusive leasing agent for the building, which has about 50,000-sf available at present.

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May 14, 2007
Bloom returns to the high-tech beltway Firms, amenities revitalize 128 stretch
Boston Globe

By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff

WALTHAM -- Employees of software company Pyxis Mobile Inc. remember feeling lonely in 2003 when they moved into Reservoir Place, a sprawling silver office building overlooking Route 128.

"You'd walk down the corridors, and you'd hear the echoes," recalled T. L. Neff, executive vice president of Pyxis, which makes software that puts financial data on BlackBerry mobile devices.

Today, he has plenty of company. Occupancy at Reservoir Place, a 530,000-square-foot building with a signature clock tower over its main entrance, has climbed to 92 percent after dipping below 70 percent in 2002 when the dot-com frenzy evaporated. The building's atriums are filled with young techies, some in shorts and polo shirts, sipping cups of espresso and tapping away on wireless laptops.

The scene is much the same elsewhere on the high-tech belt known as Route 128 West, a ribbon of highway running from Lexington to Needham through rolling hills studded with office parks.

This beltway, which has seen several boom-and-bust cycles over the past quarter century, is back in growth mode. The vacancy rate for commercial real estate has tumbled to 14.7 percent, its lowest level since 2001, according to data from Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Boston.

Here in Waltham -- the heart of the technology cluster with nearly 20 million square feet of office space, the equivalent of more than 16 Prudential Towers -- the vacancy rate is even lower, 14.3 percent.

The growth is directly tied to the recovery of the technology sector, which has regained half of the 1.2 million jobs it lost nationally after the 1990s boom, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pa. While the Boston area lagged the nation in recouping jobs until recently, it is now catching up, he said.

At the same time, venture capital investment has rebounded to the highest levels since 2001, spurring a new crop of Internet and other technology startups, and healthcare and biotechnology companies are expanding beyond Boston and Cambridge.

"Waltham is experiencing a boom," said Brendan Carroll, director of research for Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. "There's been aggressive absorption of commercial real estate, and that's been fueling high occupancy throughout Route 128 West."

But just as the high-tech industry is reinventing itself, so is Route 128. Despite its reputation as one of America's best known technology hubs, the beltway has long featured nondescript brick buildings housing some of the region's most innovative businesses. Today's businesses, and the professional service firms that have sprung up around them, clamor for "amenity-rich" environments. Developers are responding with properties modeled after the gleaming corporate campuses dotting suburbs like Reston, Va., or Menlo Park, Calif.

Reservoir Place, built in 1986 by developer Donald Tofias, was purchased in 1998 by real estate investment firm Boston Properties Inc. The new owner "rehabbed the guts of the building," adding granite in the lobby, accent colored paint, and a new heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system, said Jason A. Fivek, leasing manager for Boston Properties, which owns and leases a dozen office buildings in Waltham and more than a dozen others up and down Route 128.

In the south atrium, sunshine floods through the skylights as employees of the building's more than 50 tenant companies line up for coffee at a Starbucks kiosk or duck into the Rebecca's Cafe for some food. They eat at tables arrayed around a Japanese stone garden.

The building is a self-contained world. Employees can work out at a fitness center, get their hair cut in a barbershop, barbecue on a patio, hail cabs or book theater tickets from a concierge service, and drop off dry cleaning at a shop where they can also buy newspapers and greeting cards -- without ever venturing to the parking lot.

"People who leave one of our companies and go to work somewhere else still come back here for haircuts," Fivek said.

The leasing manager points to the natural light in Reservoir Place, contending it boosts productivity. But lighting isn't the draw for all of the building's tenants. At Blue Fang Games, blinds are drawn and dim lamps illuminate developers hunched over their workstations.

"Believe me, most gamers like to play in the dark, or pretty close to it," said Hank Howie, president of Blue Fang, which develops games focused on the animal kingdom for computers and gaming consoles. "Some of our guys like windows, and some don't care."

Because many top graphic artists gravitate to California, home of the film industry, attracting talent is harder in the Boston area, Howie said. He said the location on Route 128 allows Blue Fang to draw from a wider pool, from New Hampshire to Rhode Island. The company has flexible work hours, so employees can avoid rush hours, and many work late into the night. For breaks, there's a rec room complete with poker table and flat screen television to tune in Red Sox games.

Many employees admit they are spoiled by the amenities and seldom leave the building, though some who previously worked downtown say they still hanker for the bustling streets of Boston or Cambridge where they can window-shop or bump into friends from other companies during their lunch hour. "We have a foosball table, so that breaks up the monotony out here," said Neff at Pyxis Mobile.

In contrast to the giant anchor companies, like Wang Laboratories and Digital Equipment Corp., that marked an earlier high-tech era, the roster of tenants in Route 128 office buildings today include dozens of smaller technology startups, many of them backed by venture capital. Joining them are the regional offices of national and global conglomerates, life sciences companies migrating west from Kendall Square, and a bevy of law, accounting, and consulting firms.

The office parks on Winter Street, overlooking the reservoir, boast the largest cluster of venture capital firms outside Silicon Valley.

"There may not be a lot of Googles or other big technology companies here," said Donald W. Parker , managing partner at Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton, a law firm that has expanded five times within Reservoir Place and counts technology companies in the building among its clients. "But we have a lot of aggressive small and mid-sized businesses that are starting to make money off the Internet."

In a sign of optimism, premium office space is being built "on spec," before tenants have committed to locate there, with another 1 million square feet planned in Waltham by the end of the decade.

Boston Properties, the largest commercial property owner on Route 128 West, hopes to transplant the ambience of Reservoir Place to a 200,000-square-foot hillside complex, 77 CityPoint, its building on the other side of the highway. The new building will feature 7-foot, 4-inch-high windows and proximity to the Westin Hotel.

Fivek is confident there will be demand for space.

"Route 128 is becoming an international address," he said. "A lot of companies feel they need that address."

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May 10, 2007
Biotech’s big lab grab: Vacancies plunge, prices soar
Boston Herald

Boston Herald Business Reporter
By Scott Van Voorhis

Thursday, May 10, 2007 - Updated: 07:10 AM EST

The amount of available lab space in the Boston area is rapidly falling amid a biotech boom that’s fueled expansion and hiring by local companies, including some industry giants.

Lab space is now at a premium in biotech-rich East Cambridge, with rents topping even those in downtown Boston office towers. Developers have converted hundreds of thousands of square feet of offices into labs to meet the demand.

Investors are also rushing in to snap up lab properties, and paying as much as $1,000 a square foot, or roughly what the priciest Back Bay luxury condos sell for, in what NAI Hunneman in a report released yesterday, called a “highly competitive frenzy.”

The lab vacancy rate in East Cambridge, clustered around the research mecca of Kendall Square and MIT, fell to 5.7 percent in the first quarter. That’s down from 32.9 percent a little over two years ago, Richards Barry Joyce & Partners reports.

In Boston, lab space for rent is becoming an endangered species, with the vacancy rate dropping to 1.5 percent, according to Richards Barry.

Behind the breakneck expansion are some of the big names in the biotech and drug research business. Swiss giant Novartis and British drug giant Shire Pharmaceuticals, among others, are on the hunt for big chunks of office, lab and even manufacturing space.

Overall, companies including Novartis have taken 2.4 million square feet of lab space in Cambridge over the past three years, Richards Barry reports. That alone represents roughly 6,000 jobs, the firm estimates.

Novartis leased, built and developed 1.2 million square feet of space in East Cambridge over the past four years. Novartis is now on the hunt for hundreds of thousands of square feet of additional space, said Steve Purpura, a partner at Richards Barry. Novartis’ meteoric growth alone has led to the hiring of thousands of researchers and employees, he said.

 “Without a doubt, it’s a major driver for the whole region,” Purpura said, of the biotech industry.“It’s one of the premiere, if not the premiere biotech cluster in the U.S.”

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May 9, 2007
Web Retailer Inks 85,000-SF Warehouse Lease
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

BOSTON-The city’s limited supply of industrial space just got a little tighter following an 85,000-sf warehouse lease to CSN Stores at the Boston Business Park. A furniture and home goods retailer reliant on the Internet for sales, CSN is relocating from the Seaport District, where it occupies just under 15,000 sf.

“This represents gigantic, massive growth for [CSN],” Cushman & Wakefield senior director J.P. Plunkett tells GlobeSt.com. The company has no brick-and-mortar locations, instead encouraging consumers to purchase items online from more than 1,000 suppliers. Facilities such as Boston Business Park are being used to store the products until being shipped, a trend that is helping landlords fill warehouse space throughout the country.

Boston Business Park is owned jointly by the Campanelli Cos. and Commonfund Realty. A former supermarket warehouse facility, the 72-acre complex is being marketed to both corporate and industrial tenants, with Plunkett overseeing the leasing team along with C&W senior director Cathy Minnerly and associate Jason Breyer. Richards Barry Joyce & Partners VP Thomas Ashe was broker for CSN Stores. The tenant had considered various options in the metropolitan area before settling on Boston Business Park, but Ashe says the site fit his client’s needs in several ways, including being an urban location and one providing quick access to Route 128/Interstate 95.

“They wanted to be as close to the city as possible, so it was a real good fit there,” says Ashe. While he declined to discuss specifics of the lease, Ashe described the terms as “attractive” for CSN Stores. “I think everyone was happy with it,” Ashe says. The company is expected to begin moving in as early as this week.

Boston Business Park already has two large tenants on the premises. Polaroid Corp. occupies 95,000 sf, and logistics firm List Distribution is in a 100,000-sf block. C&W has also successfully leased space to several firms needing 10,000 sf to 15,000 sf. “There’s a bustling business community out there right now,” says Plunkett, although that has not curbed efforts to populate the remaining portions. Firms needing between 50,000 sf and 800,000 sf can be accommodated, Plunkett says. “There’s a lot of flexibility,” he says, reporting that prospects are on the rise. Boston Business Park also has build-to-suit opportunities available, adds Plunkett.

Due to ongoing shifts in manufacturing and the value of land, Boston and the inner suburbs represent a fraction of the 62.3 million sf that make up the region’s industrial base, with Jones Lang LaSalle estimating just 1.56 million sf of the supply is in those communities. Even before the CSN lease, there was less than 100,000 sf of available space in that submarket, JLL indicates in its first quarter 2007 survey.

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Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Web site points biotechs to prime locations
Boston Herald Business Reporter

By Scott Van Voorhis

Biotech executives from around the world yesterday were urged to make it in Massachusetts in a double-barreled sales pitch by both state officials and private industry.

With thousands of biotech industry executives in Boston for a major international convention, state economic development officials unveiled BioSites. The giant online database provides information on 2,900 acres and 4.6 million square feet of office and lab space across the state suitable for biotech companies interested in relocating or expanding in Massachusetts.

“We want to make it easy for biotech companies to find suitable space across the commonwealth,” said Bob Coughlin, the state’s undersecretary of business development, in a press statement.

Meanwhile, two private companies teamed up to rent a pair of tour buses to take more than 100 biotech executives on a tour of prime development sites in Boston and Cambridge. Among the stops on the tour were new lab projects in the works in Boston’s booming Longwood Medical Area and in East Cambridge near Kendall Square.

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners teamed up with Biomed Realty to rent out the buses and take biotech executives on a guided tour - complete with lobster rolls and T-shirts with the executives’ names - of both planned and already constructed lab complexes.

 “We were overwhelmed by the interest level,” said Robert Richards, president of Richards Barry Joyce and Partners.

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Monday, May 7, 2007
400 Crown Colony Gets New Leasing Agent
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

QUINCY, MA-One of suburban Boston’s top business addresses has a new leasing agent, with UBS Global Asset Management retaining Richards Barry Joyce & Partners to handle those duties at 400 Crown Colony Dr. Opened in 1988, the 120,000-sf building is situated in the master-planned Crown Colony Office Park.

“The ability to accommodate a wide range of tenants at a building located in a class A park makes 400 Crown Colony Dr. a strong option in the marketplace,” says RBJ principal Michael Frisoli, who along with associate Cal Hudek will oversee the project team. There is presently 74,000 sf available, Frisoli estimates, adding that the space can be sub dividable to 1,000 sf.

UBS has owned 400 Crown Colony Dr. since acquiring it in October 2005 for $18 million after the previous owner was foreclosed on by Allied Capital Corp. The building underwent an extensive renovation last year, and Frisoli says additional improvements are on tap. Several common areas will be upgraded, he says, food service is being incorporated into the property and UBS is also pre-building certain suites to accommodate quick occupancy. Current tenants in the building include the Patriot Ledger newspaper company and MetLife, Inc.

Crown Colony Office Park is located at the junction of Interstate 93, Route 128 and Route 3 south. The park has a diverse array of companies, among them Arbella Insurance Group, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, State Street Corp. and Boston Financial Data Services.

Its prominence and amenities, coupled with the improving economy, should generate steady traffic, according to the brokers. “The Route 128 South market has experienced a high level of leasing activity over the past several quarters,” adds Frisoli.

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Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Devens Industrial Park sold for $43.7M
Boston Business Journal

Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. sold a warehouse and packaging facility to CrossHarbor Capital Partners for $43.7 million.

The two-building complex, called the Devens Industrial Park, is a 734,620-square-foot facility that is fully leased to Gillette Co. The state-of-the-art packaging facility is located at 66 Saratoga Boulevard and is part of Devens Commerce Park in Devens, Mass. Devens Commerce Park, on the former Fort Devens Army Base, consists of 4,000 acres, including more than 1,300 acres of conservation land, a retail center, recreational facilities, a golf course and a residential community.

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC represented the seller and buyer and has been hired as the leasing agent for the building.

"We saw tremendous interest in Devens Industrial Park during the offering period," said Richard Herlihy, executive vice president of RBJ, in a statement. "There is generally a lack of new high-bay warehouse/distribution and manufacturing space available in Eastern Massachusetts, which made these buildings unique to the region and appealing to many buyers."

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April 20, 2007
Waltham rents fuel neighbors' growth
Boston Business Journal

by Michelle Hillman
Journal staff

Surging rents in suddenly pricey Waltham are spurring office tenants to look just a few miles up Route 128 to communities where bargains remain.

Burlington, Bedford and Woburn -- which have lagged in attracting tenants -- are among locations on the radar of companies looking to move to cheaper digs. They include companies new to the region and some that are leaving Waltham, real estate executives said.

Those executives are reluctant to call the increased interest a full-blown recovery of the suburban office market. But several agreed the near-saturation of the Waltham market is likely a sign of a wave of leases that will wash along Route 128.

In the last nine quarters, Waltham landlords have jacked up asking rents by 40 percent to an average of $32.54 per square foot this past quarter from $23.21 per square foot at the end of 2004, according to Brendan Carroll, director of research at Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC. And in some of the best office buildings in Waltham, landlords have asked for, and even achieved, rents in the $40 per-square-foot range.

The run-up in Waltham rents is driving tenants out to places where asking rents are below $30 per square foot.

While Waltham continues to boom, with new office buildings sprouting out of the ground, the Burlington, Bedford and Woburns of the world have at least a year to go before tenants decide those towns are budget busters, brokers predicted. Burlington's and Woburn's vacancy rates stood at 15.4 percent at the end of the first quarter. Towns including Bedford and Billerica were still fighting to lower a 30 percent vacancy rate, said Carroll.

Burlington is still far from a return to peak rents achieved in 2001, when leases were signed at $52 per square foot.

The all-time record for rents in Waltham was achieved in 2000, when a lease was signed at Waltham's Bay Colony Corporate Center for more than $70 per square foot, said Carroll.

In the meantime, growing companies are searching for places to relocate and expand.

For landlords like Arthur Gutierrez Jr., of the Burlington-based Gutierrez Co., that demand has translated into 200,000 square feet of lease deals in the last quarter. Gutierrez said recent activity is a result of internal growth by existing tenants like Nuance Communications Inc. Nuance recently signed a lease for an additional 40,000 square feet at One Wayside Road in Burlington, said Gutierrez.

"Activity is definitely way up," said Gutierrez. "Some of it may be a spillover from Waltham. Some of the new activity is from folks broadening their target area."

Gutierrez said tenants looking for Class A office space in Burlington can pay anywhere from the high $20s per square foot to the low $30s per square foot, compared to $10 to $20 higher in Waltham for the same type of office space. In Bedford, it's even cheaper, with rents for office space between $20 and $25 per square foot.

"People will look hard if you save $10 bucks a foot or more," said David Crane, a vice president at RREEF, which owns the Crosby Corporate Center in Bedford and Unicorn Office Park in Woburn.

As vacancy declines, landlords will get more aggressive and eventually close the rent gap between Waltham and Burlington, where asking rents in the last nine quarters have increased 28 percent to an average of $27.53 per square foot from $21.45, said Carroll.

At the end of the first quarter the vacancy rate in the Route 128 West market was 12.1 percent and the vacancy rate in the Route 128 North market -- of which Burlington, Bedford and Woburn are a part -- was 16.7 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield of Massachusetts Inc.

"There are no easy places to flee," said Mark Roth, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield. "Owners are pushing rents, and the vacancy continues to drop."

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Thursday, April 19, 2007
Boston warehouse demand stays strong
Boston Globe / Boston.com

There was continued strong demand for warehouse space in the first quarter of 2007 in the Greater Boston area, according to the real estate firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC.

The manufacturing space sector saw a mixed performance, also a continuation of a recent trend, the firm said.

There is strong demand for the best space in particular, RBJ said in its indSTATus report for the first quarter.

"Strong demand for a dramatic minority of the state-of-the-art industrial property" was observed, the report said.

"Greater Boston, owing to multiple periods of manufacturing success dating back to the 1800s, has a great deal of older industrial inventory," the report noted.

While that has proved suitable for re-use as the economy changed in previous periods, today things are different. "This inventory largely does not meet modern or high-tech infrastructure requirements," RBJ said.
(By Thomas C. Palmer, Jr., Globe staff)

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Fort Point building sold
Boston Globe / Boston.com

Archon Group LP has sold 268 Summer St., a former industrial building in the Fort Point Channel neighborhood, to Aegean Capital LLC for $16.3 million.The sale of the building was brokered by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, a commercial real estate advisory firm based in Boston.The transaction brought Archon, which is redeveloping a dozen or so buildings in the area with Goldman Properties of New York, about $240 per square foot for the property. Archon has had three of its buildings on the market, but this was not one of them. It has also sold three others from the 17 properties it bought from the Boston Wharf Co.The sale is the first acquisition in the Boston market for Aegean Capital LLC.“Investor interest in 268 Summer St. and the Seaport in general has been extraordinary,” said Richard Herlihy, executive vice president, Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. RBJ represented the seller and will also remain the leasing agent for the building. Archon Group is a full-service commercial real estate investment and management company and a wholly owned subsidiary of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Goldman Properties is unrelated to Goldman Sachs.
(By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe staff)

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April 16, 2007
Aegean Capital LLC Makes First Buy in Hub
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

BOSTON-The mystery buyer of 268 Summer St. has stepped forward, and the real estate investment group is already looking beyond the doorway of that eight-story, 68,000-sf office building. “We like Boston a lot,” says Costa Alexakos, who formed Aegean Capital LLC just weeks before grabbing the Summer Street asset for $16.3 million. “Its fair to say that is our core market right now.”

The New York City-based company also has a medical office building under agreement in Stamford, CT, and is exploring deals in south Florida, says Alexakos, who is a co-founder of Everest Partners LLC. That firm has been active in New England for several years, having purchased dozens of local properties, including three in Downtown Boston.

Aegean Capital shares Everest’s New York City headquarters and Alexakos is still involved in the company, but says he will soon depart and focus on Aegean Capital while Kambiz Shahbazi, the other co-founder, continues Everest Partners. “We’re basically going to split into two,” he says. A handful of Everest’s properties in Greater Boston will be put under Aegean’s control, Alexakos also confirmed, although he declined to identify the assets until that process is finalized. The firm will open a management office in Peabody to service the local portfolio, he says.

In the meantime, Aegean is moving ahead to secure deals in the white-hot investment market up to $100 million. A property Alexakos acquired in Stamford in December, 470 West Ave., will be managed by Aegean, as will 1290 Summer St., the 41,000-sf Stamford medical office building that is under agreement and slated to close early next month.

The company will explore mostly office and mixed retail/office opportunities, Alexakos says, with no minimum threshold on price. Everest was known as a company able to take underperforming assets and improve through value-added efforts, and Alexakos says that will be a strategy of Aegean Capital, although stabilized multi-tenanted buildings will also be considered. “We’re looking to do deals,” he says.

The first Boston conquest, 268 Summer St., is a former warehouse wedged amid a row of similarly converted structures lining the Fort Point Channel part of Summer Street. The price amounts to about $239 per sf, a relative bargain compared to the supposed $275 per sf being paid by Normandy Real Estate Partners for three office buildings across the street, 273, 281 and 321 Summer St. As reported by GlobeSt.com earlier this week, Normandy is buying the 270,000-sf portfolio for about $74 million, and was rumored to have 268 Summer St. in tow. Instead, Aegean Capital captured the asset in a last-minute surge.

Alexakos says the aggressive play for 268 Summer St. reflects his confidence in Greater Boston and Fort Point Channel in particular. “We think there’s a lot of promise for rental growth there,” he says. Anchored on the first floor by a Dunkin’ Donuts that recently doubled to 1,800 sf, 268 Summer St. has about 9% vacancy and two leases rolling this year representing another 10% of the building. The building had been owned by an affiliate of the Archon Group LP, the Texas firm selling the three Summer Street properties to Normandy, but was not in the portfolio of 17 buildings Archon acquired in 2005 from Boston Wharf Co. “It’s a good building physically,” says Alexakos, so well-regarded attracted Normandy and other high-grade prospects, sources say, including finalist Ashforth Paradigm Capital Advisors.

Archon bought 268 Summer St. in 1998 for $4.5 million from a firm that had foreclosed on it in 1990. The seizure capped an effort by developer Dennis Stackhouse to convert the building into office space in the mid-1980s, a pioneering venture at the time, and one that failed upon the collapse of the Boston economy. The district’s office market has seen dramatic swings since, including a brief spurt in the dot-com boom when the eclectic product type was embraced by the technology sector and commanded rents approaching $40 per sf. The average rate has since slipped back into the high-$20-per-sf range, but Alexakos is among those anticipating that will trend upward. Normandy, he notes, was not the only entity chasing the three other assets at prices approaching $275 per sf.

Aegean Capital has not yet named a leasing agent for 268 Summer St., but expects to do so soon, Alexakos says. Archon was represented in the building sale by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners and its investment sales team of Rich Bradbury and Rich Herlihy.

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April 13, 2007
Fort Point Channel: Land of property sales records
Boston Business Journal

by Michelle Hillman
Journal staff

Commercial property is once again turning over in Boston's Fort Point Channel as owners such as HDG Mansur Capital Group LLC, which bought into the neighborhood just three years ago, continue to pull up stakes.

HDG Mansur, which purchased a portfolio of 10 buildings from Boston Wharf Co. in 2004 for $92 million, has reportedly hired CBRE/New England to sell the property, which is entirely leased to Thomson Financial. When reached by phone, Susan Routh, a senior vice president at HDG Mansur, declined to comment and referred calls to the media relations department of the Indianapolis-based company.

As HDG Mansur moves forward with plans to sell the 380,000-square-foot portfolio -- located along Seaport Boulevard across from Fan Pier and in front of land owned by Gale International and Morgan Stanley Real Estate now being called Seaport Square -- other assets are setting sale records for the area.

The latest per-square-foot price record was set when New York-based Aegean Capital LLC recently paid $16.3 million, or about $240 per square foot, for the 68,000-square-foot building at 268 Summer St. The building was one of four being sold by Archon Group LP and its partner, Goldman Properties Co.

"We are definitely the highest per-square-foot price as of last week," said Richard Herlihy of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC, which sold the building on behalf of Archon/Goldman.

The eight-story building was 90 percent leased at the time of the sale to Aegean Capital and attracted 17 bids, said Herlihy, but the per-square-foot price could soon be trumped if another deal for three Summer Street buildings closes.

In the more recent deal, New Jersey-based Normandy Real Estate Partners has reached an agreement to buy 273, 281 and 321 Summer St. for about $70 million or roughly $280 per square foot, according to several real estate sources. The buildings total 242,000 square feet and are renovated to a higher level than the building at 268 Summer, which was upgraded in 2001, said Herlihy.

The run-up in pricing reflects investor confidence in the potential of the neighborhood. For the sellers, it's good timing.

"There's a real compelling growth story in the Fort Point area," said Lisa Campoli, head of Meredith & Grew Inc.'s capital markets group. "Historically these look like high numbers. It's really about where you see the rent growth."

Herlihy said rents in the Fort Point Channel neighborhood, which is sandwiched between the Seaport District of South Boston and the Financial District downtown, have increased 10 percent to 15 percent in the last year alone.

Average asking rents for office space are $30 per square foot, compared with rents in the low $20 per square foot two to three years ago, he said.

"$280 is the new high-water mark in the Seaport District," said Frank Petz, managing director of CBRE/Melody. "People are buying the whole story. The combination of new development on Fan Pier, old McCourt land, the Core Block ... people see a lot of fresh capital that will make things happen in that area. The vision is becoming a reality."

For Aegean, the deal was attractive because of the total acquisition price since the investment group -- headed by Constantine Alexakos, formerly of Everest Partners LLC -- looks for deals between $15 million and $20 million, said Herlihy.

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April 3, 2007
Suburban Office Recovery Spreads Outward
GlobeSt.com

By Joe Clements

WALTHAM, MA-Boston’s suburban office market is beginning to match the recovery seen in Boston’s CBD. The recovery that began in Waltham and the surrounding Route 128 submarket is finally moving outwards, as demonstrated in Q1 data compiled by Boston real estate services firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. To be released today, the RBJ’s officeSTATus report shows that vacancy rates have fallen precipitously in virtually every submarket abutting Waltham, helping to boost rental rates.

“Landlords are experiencing a pricing power they have not seen since 2001,” Richards Barry Joyce & Partners research director Brendan Carroll tells GlobeSt.com, as demonstrated in the Burlington/Woburn submarket. A year ago, the highest class A asking rents in Waltham was 33% above that found in Burlington/Woburn, $35.50 per sf to $26.75 per sf. That figure now has been whittled down to 11%, $40 per sf to $36 per sf.

Nearly all of the positive absorption for the quarter was in the Interstate 495 West market where Westborough is located, good news for a submarket that suffered mightily following the recession that gripped Massachusetts beginning in 2001. Once hitting 30%, the vacancy rate in the 16.7-million-sf submarket has gone from 27.9% 13 quarters ago to 17.9%, with the mark down from 21% one year ago, says RBJ. “It has been very a solid year for 495 West,” concurs Carroll, who reports that the asking rent is now at $20.82 per sf, a gain from $19.27 per sf after the first quarter of 2006.

Due largely to appreciation in the core community, the chasm in pricing has actually accelerated between Waltham and I-495 West to a 37% difference in average asking rents, up from just 20% two years prior. As a result, says Carroll, price-sensitive tenants are now looking at the outer fringe markets for relief, helping to spur the greater activity around the edges. Since the recovery began in Waltham in late 2003, there has been two million sf of absorption in Route 128 West, but 4.1 million sf in the abutting submarkets such as I-495W, Burlington/Woburn and south on Route 128 in such communities as Canton, Dedham, Norwood and Westwood. Besides the improving economy, Carroll attributes that velocity to the tighter inventory and higher pricing now found in Route 128 West.

Firms are indeed looking at alternatives, according to RBJ vice president Ron Friedman. “We are seeing that, absolutely,” says Friedman, especially for small- and medium-sized companies. “For the price-sensitive [tenant], Waltham is going to be hard to get their arms around from a value perspective,” he says. One interesting outcome from the first quarter numbers is the $40-per-sf ask rate for Waltham, the first time that figure has been hit since the downturn. Waltham, which has 9.1 million sf of office space, posted 37,000 sf of absorption in the first quarter to drop its vacancy rate from 18.7% a year ago to 14.3%, compared to 16.2% for the entire Route 128 West submarket. Route 128 West had 105,000 sf of net absorption in the quarter. The submarket’s vacancy rate last year was 1.5%.

In other suburban activity during the first quarter, the 11.2-million-sf Route 128 South submarket had 14,000 sf of positive absorption and has seen its vacancy fall from 15.2% a year ago to 12.4%. Overall, the suburbs had a solid start to the year, Friedman tells GlobeSt.com. “There’s activity and there’s optimism and we expect those trends to continue,” he says.

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March 29, 2007
Syntonix, Resolvyx sign leases for suburban space
Boston Business Journal

Two life science companies have signed leases for suburban headquarters totaling 33,900 square feet.

Syntonix Pharmaceuticals Inc. renewed its lease 25,200 square feet for their corporate headquarters 9 Fourth Ave. in Lexington, Mass. Syntonix, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Biogen Idec (Nasdaq:BIIB) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing drugs to treat chronic diseases. Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC represented Syntonix. The landlord, J.F. White Contracting Co., represented itself.

Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals Inc. leased 8,700 square feet on the first floor of 6-8 Preston Court in Bedford, Mass. Resolvyx is a biopharmaceutical company that develops therapies that use the body¹s response to treat inflammation as a result of chronic disease. Richards Barry Joyce represented the tenant and the building¹s landlord is Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc.

"Cambridge and Boston still remain the primary locations for life sciences companies in the Greater Boston area," said Jonathan Varholak, a partner at Richards Barry Joyce & Partners in a statement. "The suburbs, however, are increasingly attracting more life sciences firms, due in part to space crunches in Cambridge and Boston and a comparatively lower lease cost."

According to research by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, the Greater Boston suburban market consists of 3.7 million square feet of laboratory space and was 20.9 percent vacant, as of the end of the third quarter last year.

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March 23, 2007
Raytheon looking at 500K sq. ft. in northern suburbs
Boston Business Journal

by Michelle Hillman
Journal Staff

Raytheon Co. could prop up the struggling northern suburban market with a single lease -- a 500,000-square-foot deal.

The defense company has been canvassing the suburbs north of Boston looking at buildings in Burlington, Lexington and Littleton, according to real estate executives familiar with the search.

Raytheon occupies 14 facilities in nine Massachusetts cities and towns that total more than 4 million square feet, said Jon Kasle, a Raytheon company spokesman. Kasle declined to comment on any specific search for space.

However, Raytheon has considered leasing space at facilities such as the former Hewlett-Packard Development Co. LP complex in Littleton.

"While I would love to tell you we have a deal to announce ... they are out in the market and they are a large user," said Brian Barringer, director of acquisitions at Newton-based National Development, which bought the 39-acre campus at 550 King St. in Littleton last March for $26 million.

Few real estate executives could say what Raytheon's plans are. The company's real estate broker, Leonard Owens of McCall & Almy Inc., could not be reached.

Raytheon is touring a market that suffers from double-digit vacancy rates.The 495 North market, which includes towns from Arlington to Woburn, posted a 23 percent vacancy rate at the end of the fourth quarter, according to data from Jones Lang LaSalle.

"A 500,000-square-foot requirement will lower the vacancy rate by 3 percent to 4 percent," said John Wilson, a partner at Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC. "The vacancy rate will drop by 3.5 percent just by this getting pulled off the market."

The 495 North market has a long way to go before it stabilizes, which Wilson said requires the vacancy rate to be between 18 percent and 20 percent. Until the vacancy rate improves, office space in the northern suburbs is still a good value, said Wilson. The average asking rents for office space in the 495 North market are between $9 and $13 per square foot, he said.

Raytheon is reportedly exploring existing office space, older sites the company previously vacated and rehabilitation opportunities in the Route 495 and 128 North markets.

While the market is undergoing a slow recovery, it has been helped by expansions of companies such as Raytheon. Wilson's firm has brokered the leases of 500,000 square feet of space at Cross Point in Lowell. One of the largest deals there was struck with Motorola Inc., which leased 195,000 square feet and relocated employees from several other suburban locations to the complex.

"Companies are doing well," said Chris Tosti, of CB Richard Ellis/New England. "There are a lot of companies around here that are pretty darn profitable. Raytheon is a great example. They've survived as one of the best (defense) contractors out there."

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March, 1 2007
Health care union relocates to Boston
Boston Business Journal

The 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East has signed a 50,498-square-foot lease and will move from Roxbury to Boston.

The union will move to a building owned by the Corcoran Jennison Cos. at 150 Mount Vernon St., where it will double in size. The 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East is the largest healthcare workers union on the east coast and the largest local union in the world, representing more than 275,000 members and retirees. The five-story, 125,000 square-foot office building has 25,000 square feet of vacant space remaining. At the end of last year the downtown Boston office submarket was 11.5 percent vacant, according to research by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC represented the landlord, Corcoran Jennison Cos., in the lease transaction. The union was represented by Saint James Real Estate Advisors.

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February 16
BT Conferencing is on the move: Braintree HQ shifting to Quincy due to growth
The Patriot Ledger

By JON CHESTO
The Patriot Ledger

BT Conferencing is moving its U.S. headquarters from Braintree to Quincy to accommodate a rapid growth in demand for the British firm’s video, Web and telephone conferencing services.

BT Conferencing recently signed a lease for about 72,000 square feet in the top two floors of the four-story office building at 150 Newport Ave. Extension in North Quincy.

The building is one of several in the neighborhood that are occupied by State Street Corp. The Boston-based financial services company’s lease expires in April, and it has been moving its employees to two other buildings in Quincy that it already uses.

BT Conferencing, a subsidiary of London-based BT Group that expanded to this country about six years ago, plans to leave its current home in the Braintree Hill Office Park by the end of June, said Jack Blaeser, general manager of BT Conferencing’s U.S. operations.

The telecom company has been steadily adding jobs in recent years in Braintree, and at other sites nationwide. It now employs about 460 in the United States, including about 220 in the Braintree headquarters, Blaeser said. He said BT Conferencing uses about 40,000 square feet in the Braintree office park, but the space is split among four different office suites in the same building.

The move to North Quincy will give BT Conferencing contiguous office space.

‘‘We’re excited,’’ Blaeser said. ‘‘We’ve got more space to accommodate the tremendous growth we’ve had over the last six years. It brings us all together.’’

Blaeser said the company was attracted to North Quincy because of its access to the Red Line, as well as its proximity to the company’s current U.S. headquarters and to Boston.

Mike Frisoli, a partner at Boston brokerage Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, said the building’s owner, Normandy Real Estate Partners of Morristown, N.J., plans extensive renovations before BT Conferencing moves into the building.

Frisoli, whose firm is marketing the building on behalf of Normandy, said the owner will install a new fitness center, conference center, cafeteria, lobby and executive dining area. He said the rest of the space is generating interest from a number of financial services companies in the area.

Normandy bought the 121,000-square-foot building in late 2005 for $13.6 million.

State Street, Quincy’s largest employer, had about 400 people in the building before the move began, State Street spokesman Steve Maguire said. He said those employees have been steadily moving to two other buildings in Quincy - another State Street building on Newport Avenue Extension in North Quincy and the company’s office in the Crown Colony office park - for the past several months.

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February 16, 2007
Life sciences: Pushed or pulled to the suburbs?
Lower costs for employees help make burbs attractive
Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology - February 16, 2007

by John Wiseman
Mass High Tech

Drawn by the advantages and amenities, life sciences firms of all sizes have been part of Boston's suburban landscape for more than 20 years. Why has this occurred? Major rent savings? Free parking? Easy expansion? Do these characteristics draw firms -- or are they side benefits of relocating?

As recent reports in Mass High Tech and other publications have noted, with increasing rents and decreasing availability of lab space in Boston and Cambridge, life sciences firms are also being pushed to the suburbs. A move to the suburbs, however, can be their pull as much as the push from the city.

Rent savings in the suburbs, which can be anywhere from 50 percent to 75 percent, have always been an enticement to locate outside of Cambridge, especially for startups. According to the third-quarter 2006 bioSTATus report from Richards Barry Joyce and Partners LLC, "Laboratory space (in the suburbs) is available at rates that are nearly half the cost of comparable Cambridge space, and the currently available supply is complemented by a development pipeline that could be constructed in a shorter time frame than proposed development sites in Boston and Cambridge."

Since more land is available, and permitting is often streamlined, more projects can be created.

Additionally, with easier access and staging, construction costs are typically meaningfully less, and project delivery times are faster.

Because lab buildouts can be extremely complicated, with requirements such as clean rooms, lab bench setups, specialized ventilation systems, fume hoods, and more, construction periods greater than six months are common. Faster delivery can be a real advantage, particularly for new firms.

Catering to young firms

Young life sciences companies generally find a welcoming environment in the suburbs, not only in terms of available space, but also regulations. Incubator concepts such as Emerging Technology Centers cater to these new firms, which need to put much of their seed capital toward research and development and growing the business. With access to turnkey facilities, emerging firms can focus on their science and not on their real estate.

Creative incubator programs, extending support to life sciences entrepreneurs in their initial ventures, attract those moving from university labs. Such programs typically feature a graduated rental schedule and guaranteed space after the initial lease term. No longer tethered to the cachet of a Cambridge address, clusters of these small firms dot the suburbs, creating vibrant communities that reinforce the viability of these new firms for customers and investors alike.

Established and thriving

In addition to newly formed firms, many well-established companies specifically choose suburban park settings to better focus and consolidate research efforts and prepare for product manufacturing.

Representing just three among many dozens of life sciences companies that selected the suburbs for their businesses are U.S. Genomics Inc., a Woburn company said to be pioneering single-molecule biology technologies; Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. in Waltham, a world leader in analytical instruments since 1956; and Agencourt Bioscience Corp., a Beverly-based provider of genomic services and nucleic acid purification products.

The expansion possibilities afforded in the suburbs -- often cost-prohibitive and unwieldy (if even available) in an urban setting -- provide another significant advantage.

The convenience of having all major functions under one roof, on one level, is a "major plus." Something as seemingly simple as a delivery can be trying in a city like Cambridge with its access and parking challenges.

Choosing a lifestyle

Not only are life sciences companies maturing in the suburbs, their employees are as well. A suburban address is said to actually aid in recruitment efforts and employee retention.

Housing costs are lower and commutes are shorter. Parking is free and plentiful. For those without cars, public transportation often is a reasonable alternative.

Whether a startup with the hope of growing, or a larger company establishing its roots, firms are feeling the pull to the suburbs to establish labs.

John Wiseman is vice president of leasing for Cummings Properties LLC, a privately held regional real estate development firm headquartered in Woburn. He can be reached at 781-932-7040.

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February 16, 2007
Archon, partner to shed 4 Fort Point office buildings
Boston Business Journal

by Michelle Hillman
Journal Staff

Archon Group LP and its partner, Goldman Properties Co., continue to divest their Fort Point Channel holdings, putting four Summer Street office buildings on the sale block.

Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP is the broker on three properties totaling 242,000 square feet: 273, 281 and 321 Summer St. Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC is the broker on the eight-story, 68,000-square-foot building at 268 Summer St.

There are no asking prices for the properties, but real estate sources expect the four buildings together could sell for $70 million.

Bids for the Summer Street properties being sold by Holliday Fenoglio Fowler are due this week, said Thomas Alperin, president of National Development in Newton, who is considering making an offer on the properties.

"We are interested in expanding our presence in the Fort Point Channel neighborhood," said Alperin, saying his bid is going to depend on pricing.

Last month, National Development purchased five buildings, totaling 333,000 square feet, on Congress and Farnsworth streets in the Fort Point Channel area from Berkeley Investments Inc. for $74.2 million.

Both Berkeley Investments and Archon/Goldman have sold off assets acquired as part of large real estate portfolios since acquiring buildings from Boston Wharf Co. about two years ago. Berkeley paid $100 million for 12 buildings in 2004 and Archon paid $93 million for 17 buildings in 2005.

Another large property owner, HDG Mansur Capital Group LLC, is reportedly evaluating its portfolio of 380,000 square feet of office buildings for sale, but the property is not on the market. HDG bought the buildings from Boston Wharf for $92 million in 2004.

In addition to the four buildings Archon is selling, last month it sold 311 Summer St. to Cambridge-based architectural firm ADD Inc. for an undisclosed price. Last fall, Archon sold 263 Summer St. to Paradigm Properties Inc. for $10.3 million.

Real estate executives say they are not surprised Berkeley and Archon have sold portions of their portfolios. Many of the office buildings that are being sold have been filled with tenants, increasing the value of the property.

Richard Herlihy, an investment sales broker with Richards Barry Joyce, said the building he's selling for Archon, 268 Summer St., "certainly will sell for $200" per square foot, but he said there is not an asking price for the property.

Herlihy said the main reason the assets aren't priced is because the interest in the Fort Point Channel is changing so rapidly it's hard to be certain what an appropriate asking price would be.

"The level of activity over there has been pretty phenomenal," said Herlihy.

Michelle Hillman can be reached at mhillman@bizjournals.com.

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February 14, 2007
Openwave Relocates Regional HQ
GlobeSt.com

By Beverly Ford

BURLINGTON, MA-Software solutions provider Openwave Systems Inc. will relocate its regional headquarters to 37,207 sf of space at One Wall St. this spring. The firm signed a seven-year lease arrangement that gives it a full floor in the six-story building here.

Ron Friedman, with Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, tells GlobeSt.com that the firm’s relocation from nearby Burlington Woods Drive will slightly expand Openwave’s offices and give the firm the entire second floor in a recently renovated property.

Terms of the lease were not disclosed but Friedman says the 192,000-sf building, which is about 89% occupied, generally leases in the high $20s per sf gross.

The building, located near Routes 128 and 3A and owned by the Gutierrez Co., has been filling up quickly since the owner began a massive renovation effort to update the property’s interior, including creating a new lobby, fitness center and food service area, Friedman says. A new lease is currently being negotiated for the third and fourth floors, leaving just 24,000 sf available on the ground level, he says.

“The interest is not surprising, given the building’s location, amenity package and recent renovations,” says Jonathan Varholak, also with Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.

Friedman and Varholak handled the lease negotiations for the landlord. Openwave was represented by brokers from NAI Hunneman.

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February 14, 2007
BT Conferencing signs lease, plans relocation
Boston Business Journal

BT Conferencing Inc. signed a lease for 71,869 square feet and will relocate its headquarters from Braintree to Quincy, Mass.

The lease, signed with landlord Normandy Real Estate Partners LLC, is for two floors at the 121,329-square-foot office building located at 150 Newport Ave. in Quincy. BT Conferencing is currently located in multiple suites at the Braintree Hill Park in Braintree, Mass. The current tenant, State Street Corp., plans to vacate the building in April.

"We have been repositioning 150 Newport Avenue as a multi-tenant building, with the expected departure of State Street," said Ray Trevisan, principal of Normandy Real Estate Partners, in a statement. "We are pleased to have an anchor tenant for the building that coincides with the departure of State Street."

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC represented Normandy Real Estate Partners and Meredith & Grew Inc. represented BT Conferencing in the transaction.

The building at 150 Newport Ave. was sold to New Jersey-based Normandy by Morgan Stanley for $13.6 million in December of 2005. Since buying 150 Newport Ave. Normandy has acquired a total of 3.1 million square feet in the Greater Boston market.

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February 8, 2007
Westwood Station Sees Strong Tenant Interest
GlobeSt.com

By Beverly Ford

WESTWOOD, MA-The first shovelful of dirt has yet to be lifted but tenants are already lining up to be part of Westwood Station, the $1.5-billion, 4.5-million-sf mixed-use development planned for a 135-acre University Avenue site here.

“This project has been on people’s radar for some time,” Cal Hudak, with Richards Barry Joyce & Partners’ Boston office, tells GlobeSt.com, adding that there has been “tremendous” interest in the lifestyle center from both local and national tenants eager to get in on the ground floor.

New England Development is the exclusive retail broker. And Hudak, whose firm was recently selected as the exclusive commercial leasing agent by local developer Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, says the RBJ leasing team, which includes Michael Frisoli and Robert Richards, has been fielding inquiries from “a wide range of groups” about space in the project. “We’re really seeing interest from the whole spectrum,” he says. Although no leases have yet been signed, that is expected to change in the next few months as Westwood Station begins to go vertical.

The project, whose first phase is expected to be completed by late 2008 or early 2009, will add 1.4 million sf of retail and restaurants space, 1.5 million sf of office and laboratory space, 1,000 residential units and two hotels on a site adjacent to Route 128 and the Westwood commuter rail stop.

The retail space, developed by New England Development in partnership with CC&F and the developer’s joint venture partner, Commonfund Realty Inc., will include a mix of leading restaurants and specialty retailers which may include some well-known but as yet undisclosed Boston names.

“The goal is to create a downtown setting in the suburbs so we’ve been talking to a wide range of users in downtown and in Cambridge,” Hudak says.

Demolition began on the site in September when Testa Construction of Lynnfield began tearing down the 260,000-sf General Motors building in what will be the core development area. The demolition of several other buildings is expected to begin in the spring. A key component of the design will be the reconstruction of an existing highway ramp that will improve traffic flow to Westwood Station and curtail traffic through the surrounding neighborhood.

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February 8, 2007
Office space at Westwood Station
Daily News Transcript

By Greg Duggan/Daily News staff

WESTWOOD - Cabot, Cabot & Forbes considers the office portion of its Westwood Station development one of the three legs supporting the project, and the builder now has a leasing agent to help attract tenants.

On Tuesday, CC&F and the commercial real estate firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners announced a partnership for the $1.5 billion Westwood Station project on University Avenue. The development's design includes 1.5 million square feet of office space.

"We're attracting interest from a lot of different companies and industries," Dan Foley, marketing manager for Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, said yesterday. "The smart growth aspect is attractive to a lot of companies. Employees, visitors and clients can access the space easily."

No tenants have signed leases at this point, though CC&F President Jay Doherty said it's typical not to have agreements until projects have progressed further along in the permitting stage.

The developer wants to attract high-quality firms such as those that may be looking to relocate from Boston or Cambridge, Doherty said.

At Tuesday night's Planning Board meeting, which covered urban design aspects of Westwood Station, David Manfredi of Elkus/Manfredi Architects said the offices could support a variety of uses. Several tenants could occupy a single floor of a building, or one company could create a campus out of two or three buildings, Manfredi said.

Michael Frisoli of Richards Barry Joyce, who lives on Margery Lane in Westwood, said the leasing agent wants to appeal to companies to set up headquarters in Westwood Station.

Although the final office setup will comprise 1.5 million square feet along the western edge of the project, the ultimate layout of the buildings depends on the market.

According to Doherty, CC&F will build the office space as tenants become available.

Doherty said the first office building would encompass 125,000 square feet, and additional buildings would follow as tenants expressed interest.

The rest of the development calls for 1.35 million square feet of retail space, 1,000 residential units and 330 hotel rooms.

Planning Board public hearings on Westwood Station are scheduled to continue at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in Westwood High School to discuss environmental impacts of the design.

Daily News staff writer Greg Duggan can be reached at 781-433-8355 or by e-mail at gduggan@cnc.com.

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February 7, 2007
Westwood Station Leasing Agent Hired
Patriot Ledger

WESTWOOD - Richards Barry Joyce & Partners has been hired as the exclusive leasing agent to market and lease the office space at the massive Westwood Station development. Developer Cabot, Cabot & Forbes tapped the Boston-based real estate brokerage to find tenants to fill up to 1.5 million square feet in office space planned for the mixed use development near Route 128.

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Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Westwood Station leasing agent chosen
Boston.com

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC was selected as the exclusive leasing agent of Westwood Station, a mini city planned for the suburbs.

Richards Barry Joyce said it was selected as leasing agent by Cabot, Cabot & Forbes of New England Inc., which is developing the project with New England Development of Newton.

Plans envision turning 130 underused acres near the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Route 128 rail station into 1.49 million square feet of office and laboratory space, 1.35 million square feet of stores and restaurants, 1,000 residential units, and two hotels, Richards Barry Joyce said.

Richards Barry Joyce has been selected as the leasing agent for the office and lab space.

The project's early cost estimates have been put at $1.5 billion.

The clearing of the site is underway with the recent demolition of the former General Motors building; more demolition is set for late spring, Richards Barry Joyce said.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)

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February 1, 2007
Westwood Station selects leasing agent
Boston Business Journal

The developers of Westwood Station have selected Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC as the exclusive leasing agent for the mixed-used development.

The developers of the Westwood Station project, Boston-based Cabot, Cabot & Forbes in partnership with Newton, Mass.-based New England Development, are building a master-planned community that includes: 1.49 million square feet of office and lab space; 1.35 million square feet of retail and restaurant space; 1,000 residential units and two hotels. Commonfund Realty Investors LLC of Wilton, Conn., is an investment partner in Westwood Station.

Richards Barry Joyce & Partners was hired to lease the office component of the project in Westwood, Mass.

Westwood Station is located off of Route 128 and adjacent to the MBTA's Route 128 Station, which has both commuter rail and Amtrak service.

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January 17, 2007
“Plots & Ploys – Beantown Buyout”
Wall Street Journal

Click here to read the Wall Street Journal Article

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January 16, 2007
Office properties in Boston, Boxborough sold
Boston Business Journal

Two office buildings located in Greater Boston sold separately for a total price of $39.2 million.

The first building, at 70 Franklin St. in Boston, Mass. was sold by Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers to Westport Point Capital LLC for $21.5 million deal. The 84,442 square-foot building was purchased in a joint venture between Boston-based Westport Point and Prudential Investment Management Services LLC as first reported by the Boston Business Journal in December. Kennedy Associates, based in Seattle, Wash., sold the 149,528 square-foot office building at 80 Central St. in Boxborough, Mass., to KBS Realty Advisors LLC for $17.7 million.

Boston-based real estate firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC negotiated both of the sales.

"The investment sales market across Greater Boston continues to be strong, as evidenced by these two sales in very different sub-markets," said Richard Herlihy, of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, in a statement. "In each transaction, we witnessed strong interest in the property and ran a very competitive process."

Subsequent to buying the Boxborough building, KBS named Richards Barry Joyce & Partners LLC the leasing agent.

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January 11, 2007
Gillette to move headquarters to S. Boston, upgrade facility
Boston Globe

By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff  

Procter & Gamble Co. said yesterday that Gillette will vacate its Prudential Tower corporate headquarters and consolidate at the shaving firm's South Boston factory, where P&G plans to invest an additional $35 to $50 million to upgrade the facility.

The Cincinnati consumer products conglomerate, which bought Gillette in 2005 for $54 billion, also said it will eliminate the Gillette global-business unit, which included blades and razors, Braun, and Duracell, as a separate division. Instead, P&G will combine the unit with its existing beauty and health, and household care businesses, joining brands such as Olay skin care and Tide detergent.

The reorganization will take effect July 1 and will not change the physical location of the operations, with Gillette remaining in South Boston, Braun in Kronberg, Germany, and Duracell in Bethel, Conn. Mike Norton , a Gillette spokesman, said about 50 job cuts are expected as part of the restructuring of the 20,000 jobs under the Gillette global-business unit.

Gillette said it would disclose any decision about Mark Leckie , who currently heads the Gillette global-business unit. But one analyst said Leckie, one of the few remaining Gillette executives, will likely leave the company.

Employees now located in the Back Bay will finish moving to South Boston when the Prudential lease expires in 2009. P&G said it plans to spend up to $50 million -- in addition to $200 million previously disclosed in 2005 -- to upgrade and expand office space, lobby and meeting areas, training rooms, a cafeteria, and an employee fitness center.

"This major new investment underscores P&G's continued strong commitment to our premier shaving facility and to our robust presence here in Massachusetts," Chip Bergh , P&G's president of global grooming. "By combining the key blade and razor functions in one location, we will further strengthen our focus on world-class shaving product innovation and manufacturing technology."

Folding Gillette into P&G's existing divisions will allow the business to more effectively, and consistently share technologies, and marketing innovations, according to P&G spokesman Terry Loftus .

"The full integration of P&G and Gillette was going to happen at some point," Loftus said. "It's key to our future success as a company."

William Schmitz , an analyst for Deutsche Bank, said the consolidation will help P&G more easily cross-promote P&G and Gillette products , and better leverage technology and scale when it goes to market.

Gillette's corporate headquarters at the Pru has taken a big hit since the P&G takeover, with about half the employees leaving through attrition, consolidation, or transfers to P&G operations in other cities. About 600 workers currently remain, Norton said, and the details of the relocation plan have not been finalized.

John P. Barry of real estate firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, which is subleasing about 10 of Gillette's 19 floors, said it had signed leases or expected to sign leases for five floors. Specialty retailer CSN Stores, which already has space at the Pru, and Eduventures, an education information services company previously located on Summer Street, are the first businesses to move in and two others are expected to relocate this summer, Barry said. Another five floors are still available.

Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.

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January 11, 2007
Gillette Move Puts 500,000 SF in Play
GlobeSt.com

By Beverly Ford

BOSTON-About 375,000 sf of Prudential Tower space has hit the market--with more to come--as the Gillette Co. prepares to move its corporate headquarters to its South Boston manufacturing facility. The 375,000 sf represents about 12 floors of the 19 floors Gillette leases in the 1.2-million-sf Back Bay tower, Gillette’s Michael Norton tells GlobeSt.com.

Norton says the Gillette relocation is part of a plan by Proctor & Gamble, Gillette’s parent firm, to put all of the company’s operations on one campus. As part of that relocation, Proctor & Gamble will spend between $35 million and $50 million to upgrade its One Gillette Park facility in South Boston.

Gillette’s move from the Prudential Tower to South Boston, which is expected to be completed by December 2009, will put a total of 500,000 sf of prime Back Bay sublease space on the market in an area where large blocks of contiguous office space is a highly sought after commodity.

“We’ve had very solid demand,” Tom O’Regan, vice president of Richards Barry Joyce and Partners, which is helping to market the space, tells GlobeSt.com. “The Back Bay is very tight and there’s not a lot of space out there.”

So far, about 75,000 sf of that space has already been leased, said another broker familiar with the lease up. Among the tenants who have signed on for the Gillette space is Eduventures, a research and consulting firm that last month inked a deal for 48,507 sf . Cost of Gillette’s sublease space has not been disclosed but O’Regan says high-rise, direct lease space in the Back Bay usually leases for between $50 to $60 per sf.

While the Gillette space offers a high profile location and outstanding views, it comes with certain challenges, among them the short term remaining on the sublease, O’Regan says.

“It’s only for a very specific part of the market,” he notes. “It provides an opportunity for some people but others won’t consider it because of its short term.”

For companies looking for a longer term lease at the Prudential, O’Regan says, there’s always the option of working out a deal with the building’s owner, Boston Properties, to fill the sublease space and extend the lease beyond the two-year term.

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January 9, 2007
Boston Tower Sales Hit New High at $859 Per SF
GlobeSt.com

By Beverly Ford

BOSTON-The one-million-sf One Lincoln St. building, acquired by an affiliate of Fortis Property Group for $889 million, or $859 per sf, set a record for per-sf tower space sales. The $846 million paid for the John Hancock Tower is just another example of the record-breaking sales of 2006.

“The future looks pretty good for continued investment activity and record breaking prices,” predicts David Begelfer, head of the local chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

But Richard Bradbury, vice president of finance for Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, tells GlobeSt.com that while per-sf pricing should continue to remain high, it could be awhile before Boston will see another tower sell in the $800-per-sf price range.

“One Lincoln is a bit of an anomaly because it’s a single-tenant deal,” Bradbury says, noting that the building’s strong-credit tenant, State Street Corp., and the firm’s long-term lease which stretches until 2023, put the property in an extremely valuable position. Still, he says, the fact that many of the city’s trophy assets are selling in the $500-per-sf range is an indication of just how strong the investment market is in Boston.

“In the past, pricing was high because money was cheap and investors were flush with cash,” Bradbury notes. “Today, that still holds true but now leasing fundamentals have returned to the marketplace so you can see increased pricing on towers.”

Finishing second to State Street Financial Center in per-sf cost was 3 Blackfan Circle, an 18-story property that was sold to BioMed Realty Trust Inc. for $473 million, or about $673 per sf--$170 per sf less than the top-priced property, figures provided by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners show. The Hancock Tower placed fourth on the 2006 list of the most expensive buildings in the city at $532 per sf, following 10 St. James and 75 Arlington St., an 829,000-sf property that sold to Liberty Mutual for $479 million, or about $600 per sf.

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