This Week's Boston Deal Sheet
A local developer filed a letter of intent to the Boston Planning & Development Agency for the redevelopment of a vacant gas station on Western Avenue in Brighton.
Ardashes Garabedian, the developer and owner of the gas station, filed plans for a six-story, 98K SF apartment building with ground-floor retail on the site. The apartment complex will be 18% income-restricted, exceeding the city's 13% requirement.
“Maybe I can redevelop it on my own,” Garabedian told the Boston Globe in 2015 after receiving multiple offers for his property. “It’s only in the early planning stages. Who knows?”
The letter of intent filed by Garabedian's attorney shows the property is planned to have 118 apartments and artist live-work units, ground-floor retail and below-grade parking.
The site is just one of a slew of apartment developments that have brought attention to the Western Avenue area. The Mount Vernon Co.-developed Radius Apartments is next door at 530 Western Ave. and the Samuels & Associates-developed Continuum is on the corner of Western Avenue and North Harvard Street.
SALES
BXP acquired 125 Broadway, a six-story, 217K SF life sciences property, from Biogen in a $592M sale-leaseback deal. The REIT announced that Biogen will still occupy the building until April 2028.
The two firms are also working on the redevelopment of another nearby property, 300 Binney St., a six-story 195K SF office building that BXP developed in 2013. BXP plans to turn the property into a 240K SF life sciences property. The space already is set to be leased out by The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, according to the Boston Business Journal.
LEASES
Fractyl Health, an organ editing metabolic therapeutics company, signed a lease for 78K SF at GenLabs, a 320K SF life sciences property at 3 Van de Graaff Drive in Burlington. The company is now headquartered in a 30K SF complex in Lexington.
The company plans to move into the new space in Q4 2023. CBRE's Alex Plaisted, Ryan Romano and Tom Hovey helped find the tenant and negotiated the lease on behalf of the building's owners, Jumbo Capital and Apollo Global Management.
FINANCING
Faros Properties refinanced two inns, Anchor Inn and Greydon House on Nantucket, for $11M. Anchor Inn is a 12-room bed-and-breakfast at 66 Centre St., and Greydon House is a 20-room luxury hotel at 17 Broad St.
The loan was secured through Tristan Pierce at HarborOne Bank. JLL's Jonathan Schneider represented Faros Properties in the deal.
CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT
On Tuesday, Hines hosted a groundbreaking for its South Station air rights development, a multiphase mixed-use development that began construction in January 2020. The first phase of the development will include a 51-story, 1.9M SF mixed-use tower and a new bus terminal attached to South Station, according to The Boston Globe.
The first phase will cost the firm $1.5B and will include 166 condominiums on the top floors as well as 670K SF of office space. The firm has also hinted at possible life sciences or apartment space instead of its initial plan for a hotel, according to the Globe.
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Lendlease and Ivanhoé Cambridge broke ground on the partnership's $500M life sciences development in Boston Landing. Construction began in the summer, but the groundbreaking took place on Sept. 22, according to the Boston Business Journal. The development, named Forum, is a nine-story, 350K SF life sciences facility on one of the last available sites at Boston Landing.
The joint venture will partner with MassBioEd, a nonprofit education foundation, to host programming and skill development courses for students in an effort to create a workforce pipeline for the life sciences industry. The development is expected to open in 2024.
THIS AND THAT
Davis Cos. appears to have dropped its major deal with ExxonMobil for the sale of a 95-acre tank farm site in Everett. The details of the terminated sale and purchase agreement was found in a letter from Exxon's attorney to a judge overseeing a lawsuit brought over the sale of the property by the Conservation Law Foundation.
The property would have become one of the largest potential redevelopment sites in the Greater Boston area but it has millions of dollars of pollution issues that would need to be fixed before construction could take place, according to The Boston Globe.
