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One of Boston’s rising life sciences players is ending the year with a splash, paying $238M for the waterfront Independence Wharf tower along the Fort Point Channel.
Nan Fung Life Sciences Real Estate bought the 14-story, 337K SF property from Swiss investment giant Credit Suisse, Banker & Tradesman reported. The buyer, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Nan Fung Group closed on the acquisition from an affiliate of Credit Suisse last Friday, according to Suffolk County land records.
Representatives for the firms didn’t respond to requests for comment Tuesday morning.
The property overlooking the site of the Boston Tea Party was originally built in 1927 and was renovated in the early 2000s. It spans 330K SF. Credit Suisse paid a General Electric subsidiary $106M for the building in 2009, archived reports and land records show.
Nan Fung Life Sciences Real Estate has spent a combined $638M on four downtown Boston-area office buildings since 2020, including 51 Sleeper St., a Seaport office building that faces Independence Wharf directly across the Fort Point Channel and the Seaport Boulevard bridge.
The Independence Wharf purchase eclipses the developer’s $210M payment in August for Two Financial Center in the Chinatown neighborhood. It’s also one of the year’s largest office transactions in the Boston market, edging out KKR and Synergy Investments’ $234.5M investment in Skanska’s Two Drydock office in the Seaport just last week.
The developer has expressed its intent to convert its Boston holdings into life sciences assets, although little information or updates about its properties has been revealed. The proposed conversion plays would be part of the region’s millions of SF in office-to-lab projects, which developers claim offers speed-to-market in an airtight life sciences market.
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