Spear Street in Talks to Buy Reebok Canton Campus from Adidas

CANTON—Spear Street Capital of San Francisco has agreed to purchase the 680,000-sf former Reebok headquarters being divested here by Adidas Inc., parent to the Massachusetts-based athletic footwear company that has relocated to Boston’s Seaport District. Bidding through 2017 on Reebok’s surplus suburban park was “intense” by one account which had in excess of 40 groups pursuing the 65-acre site, the ardor apparent given late-stage pricing is pegged in the range of $80 million for an opportunity pitched sans tenants.

“We are under a binding contract,” Spear Street Capital founding principal John Grassi confirms to Real Reporter Thursday while declniing to offer further insight into the negotiations which are not complete, the pricing among the details left unanswered due to confidentiality restrictions. The park is being listed exclusively through CBRE, whose Capital Markets team members did not return phone calls as of press deadline.

The development whose address is 1895 JW Foster Blvd. is described in marketing materials as “a truly forward-thinking” corporate campus that “stands out as the most spectacular” of its peers, the master-planned project opening in 2000 replete with “an amenity package second to none.” Framed around a variety of features understandably concentrated on the athletic theme, elements include tennis courts, a 400-meter running track plus a fitness center and indoor and outdoor basketball courts.

Besides “phenomenal high-end finishes,” corporate sections of the complex are deemed among the most modern thinking for the project’s time in efficient design of the space that aimed to facilitate interaction among employees, as well as promote sustainability and worker health. “They were way ahead of everybody,” observes one broker in that regard who opines it could serve as another corporate campus for a single occupant or possibly be cast for a multi-tenanted format. “It has remained very relevant” to today’s space users

Based on the West Coast and operating an office in New York City, Spear Street targets select markets in Canada and the US, with metropolitan Boston seemingly on the A List. Spear Street has completed a number of savvy urban plays this millennium from North Station to the Seaport District out to Watertown and the Inner Suburbs, plus more recently north to Andover where the firm has been repositioning the first-class Minuteman Office Park, that campus even bigger than Reebok’s with over one million sf of space.

Typically preferring deals of $35 million or more, Spear Street has acquired over five dozen assets in North America representing in excess of $6 billion in value. The value of its sold assets is in the range of $4.5 billion, and recently Spear Street has lopped off substantial portions of properties to investors while it retains a hefty stake, Minuteman Park one of them and the Riverworks mill renovation in Watertown another, its control now shared with a second CRE firm.