Nearly 10 years after acquiring a prominent parking garage in Back Bay, and seven years after securing approval for a high-rise development plan, CIM Group has sold the property for a loss.
:quality(75))
Related Beal, in partnership with Freeport Equity, acquired the 1,037-space Motor Mart Garage with ground-floor retail at 201 Stuart St., it announced Wednesday.
The buyer didn't disclose the sale price, and the deal hadn't appeared in deed records as of Wednesday afternoon. The Boston Globe, citing an anonymous source, reported it sold for $89M.
CIM had acquired the property for $162.5M on Oct. 24, 2016. The company didn't immediately respond to Bisnow's request for comment.
The garage sits just south of the Boston Public Garden and Boston Common. The property's 49K SF of retail space is 46.8% leased, according to a property listing from CBRE, which marketed the site for CIM. The building still includes Maggiano's Little Italy, but former tenants Flemings Prime Steakhouse and Legal Sea Foods have closed since CIM bought it.
The garage brings in $7M in parking income, exceeding pre-Covid levels, according to CBRE's listing.
Related Beal, the Boston arm of New York-based developer Related Cos., said it plans to keep operating it as a parking garage and retail while exploring development options.
“We are pleased to add the iconic Motor Mart Garage in Boston’s Back Bay to our portfolio,” Related Beal President Kimberly Sherman Stamler said in a statement. “Motor Mart sits at the heart of a neighborhood we have been investing in for many years and holds great possibility for future residential and commercial development.”
Related Beal has developed lab, office, residential and hospitality projects across the city, including the Seaport, Kenmore Square and Charlestown.
Los Angeles-based CIM initially filed plans in March 2018 to redevelop Motor Mart Garage into a 17-story project with 280 residential units. Then, six months later, it expanded its proposal to span 20 stories and 306 units.
It partnered with Boston Global Investors and received city approval in October 2019, shortly before the pandemic upended the market. The project has remained stalled since then, even after CIM reached an agreement with the city on transportation improvements in 2024.
CIM tapped CBRE to market the property at the beginning of this year. The firm didn't comment at the time on why it was looking to sell, but BGI CEO John Hynes told The Boston Globe in January that the potential construction price for the project had risen by $100M.
Additionally, the city's condo market has come to a standstill as developers have worked to sell a glut of newly built inventory.
Developers built more than 2,000 condos in the city over the last seven years, but only one project was under construction as of this summer: a 122-unit Seaport building that opened this week. And June data from The Collaborative Cos. showed that the Motor Mart Garage redevelopment was the only luxury condo project in the pipeline at the time.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)