Inside DivcoWest's $100M Bet On One Lincoln

Almost seven months to the day after the building was auctioned off, One Lincoln's owners unveiled a new amenity space in hopes of attracting more tenants.

The Boston office building is open once again. DivcoWest is showcasing several new luxurious amenities that have been part of a $100M investment. The landlord is focused on securing new tenants amid a leasing market that is at once both slow and competitive, according to DivcoWest Managing Director Mark Roopenian.

The unveiling comes after DivcoWest and fellow lender BDT & MSD Partners bought the office building for $400M from Fortis Property Group in March. 

"We tried to create the highest-quality workday space in the entire city of Boston," Roopenian told reporters in One Lincoln's lobby Wednesday morning. "The market will be a judge of that."

The previous owner struggled to secure tenants after landing a $1B refinancing deal.

With the renovations, DivcoWest reopened the lobby to the public with a new coffee bar and seating area. Roopenian said the company wanted the space to be more inviting rather than have its design keep the public at bay.

"This was State Street Bank's headquarters. It was like a big vault," Roopenian said. "Unless you were doing business with State Street, you weren't coming in here."

The first floor includes a tenants-only whiskey bar called Abraham's, a private lounge space called The Library Lounge and the 15K SF Lincoln Club, a health and wellness center operated by Exos.

On the seventh floor, there is an amenities center for tenants that includes a game room, an event center and various conference rooms. The amenities center has stairs leading to an outdoor space. Once outside, there is a court for pickleball or basketball, an outdoor bar and a yoga deck. 

There is still roughly 500K SF available across the building's 36 floors, Roopenian said, adding that the company has been slowly introducing brokers and tenants to the space. 

"There's been a lot of people who have said they've never seen anything like it," Roopenian said. "I've been doing this for 40 years and I've never seen anything like it."

HarbourVest had signed a 250K SF, 11-floor lease. At the time, the lease was one of the largest signed after the pandemic.

HarbourVest's office houses roughly 950 employees who began to work there in May, according to HarbourVest Director of Communications Andrew Hopkins.

The office has several different types of meeting rooms, huddle spaces and seating areas. It also includes a dedicated cafeteria on the 35th floor and an interconnected stairwell.

"We tried to cover all aspects of what our daily lives could look like," Hopkins said.

Starting Jan. 1, HarbourVest will require workers back in the office four days a week, up from three days a week in 2025.

Other tenants include WeWork on the 29th through 31st floors, law firm Sherin and Lodgen LLP on the 14th floor and financial consulting firm CFGI on the 13th floor.

In 2022, Fortis secured financing from MSD Partners and senior mezzanine financing from DivcoWest as it landed HarbourVest Partners as an anchor tenant. 

The refinancing was intended to repay existing debt and to provide more than $200M for capital upgrades. However, Fortis never made those improvements.

The 1.1M SF tower was built in 2003 and occupied entirely by State Street Corp. at the time.

The 36-story tower lost the longtime anchor tenant to Carr Properties' One Congress, with State Street announcing the move in 2019. Law firm K&L Gates also moved out, and coworking company WeWork contracted the amount of space it occupied in One Lincoln.

There have been some bright spots in the local office market as large tenants signed several leases last quarter, which had the highest leasing velocity since 2019.

Several older office buildings have announced similar capital improvement plans as a way to stay competitive in the recovering Boston office market.

Morgan Stanley unveiled its $300M renovation of One Post Office Square in 2022. International Place owner The Chiofaro Co. announced $100M in renovations to its two-tower office property in downtown Boston in 2023. The renovations are close to completion as the building attracted KKR & Co. into a 132K SF lease earlier this month.

Click through the slideshow below to see more photos of the building and HarbourVest's office.