DivcoWest to Pay Brickman $66M+ for 90K-SF Office Building Near Harvard Sq.
May 24, 2017 — By Joe Clements
CAMBRIDGE—DivcoWest is moving up in the world—or up Massachusetts Avenue, at least. The group hailing from San Francisco which has already taken Kendall Square by storm with a stream of adroit trades this decade is reportedly aiming to buy a first-class, 95,000-sf office building on the edge of Harvard Square. The current owner of 955 Massachusetts Ave. is Brickman, another investor from away who has been a beneficiary of metropolitan Boston’s impressive real estate rebound this decade, and the Gotham-based firm appears poised to continue a string of positive outcomes if reports of a DivcoWest bid eclipsing $66 million are accurate. If so, that would be nearly twice the $35.7 million which the eight-story building last changed hands for 10 years ago this September.
“They have it . . . no doubt,” one source insists regarding DivcoWest, the operation led by founder Stuart Shiff just featured at therealreporter.com two days ago regarding its unrelated sale of 350,000 sf in Boston’s Downtown Crossing to AIG Global Real Estate, a blockbuster $175 million exchange of office and retail space negotiated by the Capital Markets team at HFF. DivcoWest dispatched its majority share while operating partner Synergy Investments remains on board in a similar position with the new landlord.
Whether there is a broker involved in the pending Cambridge sale is uncertain, with JLL listed in some publications as agent for the asset, but some maintain it is a direct deal.
Brickman and DivcoWest are quite familiar with each other even while being headquartered on different coasts. Two of the five buildings harvested to AIG were bought from Brickman, for example, those considerations for 38 Chauncy St. and 55 Summer St. totaling $87.5 million made in summer and autumn of 2014. The two had swapped an even bigger portfolio across Fort Point Channel in the transformational Seaport District when DivcoWest bought 362,500 sf in a quartet of Brickman buildings for $107 million in autumn 2012, a deal initially unveiled by Real Reporter. Deja vu also there involved the same HFF brokers orchestrating the AIG agreement this week of Senior Managing Director Coleman Benedict, Director Benjamin Sayles and Analyst Patrick McAneny in the Seaport transaction. Managing Director Christopher Phaneuf participated in the AIG deal, as outlined in the Real Reporter story, and Director Lauren O’Neil Goff arranged $102 million in TH Real Estate financing for AIG.
A DivcoWest spokesperson declined to comment on the reports regarding 955 Massachusetts Ave. Observers could not say whether it will be financed or when a closing might occur and if the buyer intends to appoint anyone as leasing and property managers. Details about occupancy and rental rates were also unclear, although Transwestern Consulting Group statistics show mid-Cambridge to be the tiniest of the city’s three office submarkets at just 2.1 million sf, of which there is just a 6.0 percent vacancy rate. TCG pegs the average asking rent for mid-Cambridge at $64.92 per sf, well below the $76.95 per sf for East Cambridge that even outpaces Boston’s Back Bay, Financial District, and Seaport, but substanially higher than the $46.78 per sf average for Alewife.
One benefit for 955 Massachusetts Ave. is its location just outside Harvard Square and also within walking distance of Central Square, both of which are served by the MBTA Red Line, while numerous bus lines also pass by the property connecting to each station and other nodes in Boston and the inner suburbs.
Stuart Shiff
