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Taurus Stays in on 400 Riverpark Dr.

July 09, 2015 — By Joe Clements

NORTH READING — Turns out the DTZ Capital Markets team did not have to look very far to find a taker for their exclusive listing at 400 Riverpark Dr., the 144,000-sf office building owned by DivcoWest and Taurus Investment Holdings. That is because the latter group opted to buy out its partner at a consideration of approximately $20 million in a deal that closed this past week. Taurus
financed its purchase with $20.5 million from Eastern Bank.

“They decided to stay in,” one market watcher says of Boston-based Taurus, which joined DivcoWest in the September 2008 acquisition of 300 and 400 Riverpark Dr., paying $27.5 million for the two buildings located in Woodland Park. The same DTZ crew led by Executive Managing Director David J. Pergola and Managing Director Brian R. Doherty with Financial Analysts Colleen V. Carey and Jenna J. Skaar two years ago brokered the sale of 300 Riverpark Dr. to Tritower Financial Group for $32.3 million after it had been repositioned and stabilized in a long-term lease to an Amazon.com affiliate.

Efforts to contact DTZ and Taurus President Peter A. Merrigan were unsucccessful as of press deadline. The global Taurus platform has been targeting suburban Boston over the past year, in 2014 picking up a multifamily asset in Chelmsford and eight-building flex/office park in Waltham. Led by founder Stuart Shiff, DivcoWest has been churning its portfolio with the $100.0 million disposition of Cross Point Towers in 2014 and this winter’s trade of three office buildings totaling 221,000 sf in Boston’s Seaport District for $105.6 million.

On the flip side, DivcoWest paid $395 million for Cambridge’s One Kendall Square in early 2014 plus multiple Boston office/retail
buildings secured with Synergy Investments in the subsequent months. Industry professionals spoken to could not give a precise figure on how big a share DivcoWest ceded to Taurus. In marketing the asset, DTZ had termed it a “value-add investment opportunity with a diverse credit rent roll” of which 80.5 percent is leased to a quartet of tenants sporting a weighted average lease term of
5.24 years remaining. One source maintains DivcoWest did control a majority share of the asset, but also was unclear on how much of a majority that might entail.

Market sources did express surprise at the move by Taurus given they had given the go-ahead for a full marketing campaign, an endeavor that reportedly drew a number of viable suitors eager to take on the asset in an improving Interstate 93 and I-495 North office market. The I-495 North inventory of 11.3 million sf has seen a setback in fundamentals thus far in 2015,however, with DTZ research recording negative net absorption of 236,925 sf to push the vacancy rate back up from 21.7 percent to 24.2 percent. Asking rents continue to move upward, however, the average rising YOY from $19.00 per sf to $19.30 per sf while upper rates have risen a full dollar to $25.00 per sf.

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