National Development has secured one of the year’s largest office leases from a healthcare technology company at a Burlington office park.
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Butterfly Network, which develops ultrasound technology, last week signed a 10-year, full-building lease at National Development’s The District campus, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The move brings National Development’s 1M SF, 10-building campus to nearly fully occupied as interest in the suburbs continues to heat up.
“They came into town, they said this is where they want to be, and in three months it was all done,” Leah Harsfield, National Development senior vice president of asset management and director of leasing, said in an interview Thursday. “The CEO has great conviction in Burlington and access to talent.”
Butterfly Network, which is based in Connecticut and has offices in New York and Palo Alto, California, didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The tenant will move into the vacant three-story building once it is redeveloped in January and will initially pay an annual rate of $41 per SF, according to the SEC filing. The rate will increase by a dollar each year to $51 per SF in the term’s final eight months. Butterfly Network also has two five-year lease extension options.
The tenant will pay no rent for the first eight months of the deal, which includes National Development building out the space and giving Butterfly Network a tenant improvement allowance, according to the filing.
The Route 128 Central office submarket’s average Class-A asking rent was $37.38 per SF in the first quarter of the year, according to Cushman & Wakefield research. Burlington sits along the regional artery and 17 miles north of Boston.
The move is the latest lease in the suburbs this year, as tenants seek open spaces, more parking, proximity to an employer base that has fled the city and cost savings. Harsfield said The District has added five restaurants to make the office campus more attractive for tenants. Office space at The District is approximately 98% leased and tenants Harsfield has spoken to plan to return to the office in some form this summer, she said.
“The demand has picked up from nothing to really strong in the last two months,” she said. “No one has dropped rents, rents are what they were pre-pandemic, there’s a lot of activity.”
Major leases in Greater Boston include B2B data compiling firm ZoomInfo’s office swap in Waltham to secure up to 227K SF, and IBM’s 151K SF lease in Lowell, a relocation from a 490K SF campus in Littleton.
CORRECTION, JUNE 3, 5:40 P.M. ET: Route 128 Central's average Class-A office asking rent was $37.38 per SF in Q1. A previous version of this article detailed the asking rent for the overall Route 128 Belt. This story has been updated.
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