Thirty Perwal St., HarborSouth on Cushman & Wakefield’s 2011 Sales Dais, Firm Says
March 19, 2011 — By Mike Hoban
BOSTON—As with other St. Patrick’s Days in Boston, there was much wearing of the green and drinking of the beer this week, and for hundreds involved in commercial real estate, there was Cushman & Wakefield’s annual Top O’ the Market investment sales review and forecast. Typically geared for mid-March, the 2011 version fell right on St. Patrick’s Day, adding a festive element to C&W’s popular review of the prior year sales results and assessment of the coming season.
“How do you take advantage of what’s in this market right now? That’s what we’re going to focus on,” promised Robert E. Griffin Jr., New England area president of Cushman & Wakefield, during his remarks at the packed program Thursday night. “We’re out of the woods,” he cautioned, “but it’s not going to be a straight line recovery.”
Hosted on the (vacant) top floor of the John Hancock Tower, the trophy that accounted for the largest single asset sale in the world last year, this year’s event drew an estimated 250 CRE investors, C&W personnel and other interested parties. They were not disappointed, getting both a skyline vista of the Hub and a ground-level view of the current climate. That included announcements such as a new C&W listing to trade 30 Perwal St. in Westwood, the latest turnaround gem for Campanelli Cos., which acquired the flex/office building empty in September with partner TriGate Capital and had the 101,000 sf fully leased by January. C&W’s Capital Market Group is also commencing this week on HarborSouth, the 205,000-sf Quincy office tower owned by Griffith Properties that is being pitched for $30 million. It was the first confirmation of a listing initially revealed by The Real Reporter last month.
C&W’s multifamily and retail teams are bursting with fresh product as well, relayed Griffin, who also gave an update on progress selling the fractured Filene’s development site scarring Boston’s Downtown Crossing, explaining that residential plays are dominating the discussions on that highly scrutinized process. Griffin also announced that the 67,000-sf Hebrew College in Newton; Boston’s 131 Clarendon St. (the Hard Rock Café building); and the Embassy Cinema in Waltham would be hitting the market.
Looking back on 2010, Griffin praised the work done by his firm’s Capital Markets Group, which he reported handling $2.35 billion out of a total of $3.7 billion in the Greater Boston market. In addition to the landmark $930 million Hancock Tower sale to close out the year, C&W opened up 2010 with a bang, in February harvesting One Brigham Circle in Boston’s Mission Hill for $97 million (trading at a 6.4 percent cap rate); followed by a $94 million sale of the IBM Littleton campus in April; and the $201 million acquisition of the Lexington Technology Park in Lexington by occupant Shire Pharmaceuticals, a blockbuster trade negotiated in coordination with Richards Barry Joyce & Partners. Boston’s Park Lane Seaport sale by Simon Butler and Biria St. John highlighted the multifamily arena, as the Seaport District residential asset reaped $193 million.
On a somber note, Griffin lamented the 2010 passing of such CRE icons as Jerry O’Connor, managing partner of O’Connor Capital Partners, and Keith F. Barket, who served as Co-Chief Executive Officer at Angelo Gordon, headquartered in New York. Barket locally was best known for repositioning the failed Lafayette Mall in Downtown Crossing into a mix of modern office and retail space.
In closing, Griffin reminded investors that no matter how trying it may seem in the CRE market right now, compared to the rest of the country, Boston is in great shape. “Count your blessings every day that you’re in the Boston market,” he said, while also stressing the importance of using current market research and having an army of seasoned leasing brokers able to stabilize assets in advance of a sale. According to Griffin, for example, the Hancock Tower popularity by investors only came about after owner Normandy Real Estate and Five Mile Capital signed Bain Capital for more than 200,000 sf just prior to it being listed for sale in the spring of 2010.
As usual, attendees were buzzing before and after the C&W program, one that drew an impressive cross-section of market professionals and company clients. “I think our clients look forward to the event as much as we do and enjoy themselves year in and year out,” C&W principal Edward C. Maher Jr. said in assessing the outcome. “Even after 12 years of doing the program, it never gets old,” he added, partly a result of the evolving marketplace. As with Griffin, Maher was quick to praise the C&W leasing team for another market-leading campaign. “We’re blessed to have such a great group of senior leasing specialists on our team,” he says.
