JLL Selling 130 New Boston Street for KS Partners

WOBURN — After seven years of ownership, KS Partners is offering its regional headquarters here at 130 New Boston St. for sale through exclusive agent JLL, but principal Kambiz Shahbazi says this week his firm has no intention of relocating from the three-story, 55,925-sf office building despite having acquired several new assets thus far in 2014, including the ultra-roomy Brickstone Square office campus in Andover, a first-class building in Dedham and 141 Portland St., a mixed-use property in Boston’s promising North Station district.

“The building works well for us,” Shahbazi tells Real Reporter in praising 130 New Boston St. for its functional attributes and
being central to the firm’s CRE fiefdom which runs from northern Massachusetts to the South Shore and out through Westborough down to Connecticut. “It is a very convenient location for our portfolio, and plus we like Woburn a lot,” explains
Shahbazi, noting 130 New Boston St. is a short drive from the Woburn Mall and a sea of surrounding restaurants and retail as well direct access to Route 128 and Interstate 93.

KS Partners is trading the building as part of a shift in its holdings which have heretofore been weighted in more modest properties than those now being pursued such as Brickstone Square, which has more than one million sf on a 25.5-acre parcel. “We are going to focus on larger deals and on Class B buildings in Boston,” Shahbazi relays, a factor in opting to harvest both
130 New Boston St. and a 111,000-sf building at 33 Boston Post Rd. in Marlborough being shopped separately through Cassidy Turley and expected to trade in the $13 million range, or about $117 per sf. Shahbazi declined comment regarding ongoing negotiations there, and Cassidy Turley Capital Markets members were unavailable as of press deadline.

JLL Capital Markets officials were silent on the matter of the Woburn exclusive, but an informational package in circulation pegs
team members as Managing Directors Frank Petz and Jessica Hughes plus Senior Vice President Heather Brown and Analyst Tom Ragno, with leasing insight being provided by Senior VP Andrew Whipple. Market observers spoken to predict 130 New Boston St. could approach $10 million in a bidding competition just now commencing, yet even were that achieved, and without offering precise guidance, JLL says buyers can expect to acquire the building “at a substantial discount to replacement cost” and do so for a building sporting 94 percent occupancy leased to a diverse stripe of 11 tenants in the financial services, healthcare and technology arenas. JLL calls the 24-year-old building “an ideal combination of long-term stability and upside potential,” a mix aided by the recent renewal of three tenants to push the average remaining lease term above three years, and with one-third of the building spoken for through 2019 and beyond.

When the space does roll, it will likely be in an improving landscape, according to JLL which shows average in-place rent of
$18.74 per sf to be a 15 percent discount off the market average of $22.00 per sf. Rents along Route 128 North are up 15
percent in the past 24 months, JLL research reveals, while the vacancy rate has dropped to 11 percent.