Burlington Office Building Sells For One-Third Its Prior Price
Another suburban Boston office building has traded at a steep discount.
Worcester-based K & L Realty Co. acquired the 116K SF office building at One Burlington Woods Drive for $8.5M, according to deed records. The sale was posted in March but hasn't been previously reported.
The price is far less than the $26.6M that seller Griffith Properties paid for the building in 2013, an indication of the plunge in value the region's office properties have suffered since the pandemic.
Griffith had acquired One Burlington Woods Drive from Colony Realty Partners, which had bought it in 2012 from The Davis Cos., according to deed records. Griffith didn't respond to Bisnow's request for comment.
The property is 60% occupied, with RW Holmes acting as the leasing broker, a K & L representative told Bisnow.
The office building was built in 1981 and renovated in 2011. It sits near the Burlington Mall and the highway. The property includes a cafeteria and fitness center with showers, lockers and towel service.
The latest sale pencils out to about $70 per SF, a price that another suburban office owner pointed to this week as relatively low, saying it enables the new owner to sign tenants at cheaper rents.
"You talk about a One Burlington Woods that I think just sold for 70 bucks a foot, their value might be giving someone a great price point to come into Burlington that's out on 495 that might not otherwise be able to come into Burlington," said Nordblom Executive Vice President Crosby Nordblom, speaking at Bisnow's Boston Office and Workplace Conference.
Office vacancy across 128 North, the submarket that includes Burlington, stood at 14% last quarter, less than the 17.8% vacancy across the whole Route 128 corridor, according to Cushman & Wakefield. However, leasing activity for the submarket was the lowest in the corridor, with roughly 73K SF of deals signed in the first quarter.
Another piece of the complex, the life sciences building at 3 Burlington Woods Drive, also traded hands in March. It sold for $16.5M to The Lightstone Group.
That property previously sold from Griffith to GI Partners in 2022 for $58M, deed records show. The 175K SF, four-story life sciences conversion includes a fitness center, grab-and-go food service and charging stations.
Newmark brokered both sales, according to LinkedIn posts from Associate Director Will Sleeper. He didn't respond to requests for comment on the deals.
Other discounted office and life sciences sales have taken place in Burlington.
Last year, Los Angeles-based Montana Avenue Capital Partners acquired the Kuerig Dr Pepper headquarters for just under $160M, the Boston Business Journal reported. The firm bought another property at 4 Burlington Woods Drive for $33M in 2022.
In February, A123 Systems acquired 10 Corporate Drive from GEM Realty and The Gutierrez Co. for roughly $20M, a 52% discount from the price at which the joint venture acquired it.
