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BRG, Carlyle Trading Olmsted Place to Bell Partners for $100M+ via CBRE Exclusive

July 19, 2017 — By Joe Clements
161 South Huntington Ave, Boston MA

BOSTON—A luxury apartment community serving this city’s world-renowned Longwood Medical Area is about to change hands for a price expected to eclipse $100 million, market watchers are telling Real Reporter, with residential developer and investor Bell Partners poised to take over Olmsted Place from Boston Residential Group and Carlyle Group, the joint venture which retained CBRE/NE’s multifamily team earlier this year to peddle their 196-unit Jamaica Plain creation at 161 South Huntington Ave. which opened in 2015.

Calls to CBRE/NE’s multifamily division led by principals Simon J. Butler and Biria St. John were unreturned by press deadline, but multiple sources confirm a trade is pending, and some indicate it could be consummated as early as today at a figure multiple CRE professionals tracking the process maintain will approach $103 million. If accurate, that would equate to more than $525,000 per apartment even with an exceptionally hefty affordability component of 37 units—nearly 20 percent. The estimated project cost including $10.1 million land purchase in Dec. 2013 was put at $84 million for the building which arose at the former home of child services provider The Home for Little Wanderers.

While unable to provide any estimates on what it will fetch, another industry expert also familiar with Olmsted Place did not flinch at the proferred prognostications and cites a combination of the multi-winged building’s quality and its experienced sponsors plus its presence in a rapidly improving district as reasons investors might respond so ardently to a strip that previously was among the more desolate stretches between eclectic downtown Jamaica Plain and the 24/7 LMA.

BRG CEO “Curtis Kemeny always does good product, and I think they will get a strong number,” says the source who notes the area has attracted two other Tier One apartment developers in Samuels & Associates and the Longwood Group, the former remaking a shuttered nursing home and the latter a 195-unit high-rise designed by Prellwitz Chilinski Associates being grafted onto a once-vacant lot at 101 South Huntington Ave. The Goddard House is being redeveloped by Samuels & Associates into 167 apartments on two acres right near Olmsted Place.

“That neighborhood has come a long way in a really short time, and the improvements are continuing,” says the industry veteran spoken to who further points to Olmsted Place’s transit-oriented nature, the multi-nodal network anchored by MBTA Green Line’s E trolley connecting to Cambridge by way of the Back Bay and downtown Boston.

Olmsted Place was delayed initially while civic groups and city officials worked with BRG/Carlyle to craft a plan enhancing traditional affordability mandates and providing other community benefits such as an accessible public footpath. BRG is a seasoned multifamily owner and operator which controls over 3,000 apartments and 200,000 sf of retail concentrated in metropolitan Boston, often working with institutional capital partners including Brookfield Real Estate, Morgan Stanley, Prudential and Simon Properties. Celebrating its 30th year in business, The Carlyle Group has a global footprint and is active across numerous CRE sectors including multifamily, its total value of all holdings now at $178 billion.

Speaking of billions, should market estimates bear out, CBRE/NE will be closer to cresting the 10-figure milestone in YTD multifamily sales activity, transactions concentrated throughout New England that heretofore stood at $780 million, that figure attained via their $168 million brokerage of 311 upscale apartments in Cambridge’s Alewife District, an assignment involving the Cambridge Park Apartments at 30 CambridgePark Dr. That exclusive was undertaken on behalf of Equity Residential in which Heitman Real Estate Capital was procured for the asset following a spirited campaign. Its successful conclusion was first unveiled in a July 4th article at therealreporter.com.

Biria St. John Simon J. Butler