Related Buys Half of Boston’s Innovation & Design Building for $355M
By Chava Gourarie December 21, 2020 12:46 pm
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Jamestown has sold a 50 percent stake in the Innovation & Design Building in Boston’s Seaport District to Related Companies, and the two companies have formed a new joint venture to operate the massive, century-old property going forward, according to an announcement from Jamestown.
The value for the full property was $710 million at the time of the stake sale, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. Jamestown had listed the former cargo warehouse, which sits alongside the Boston Harbor waterfront, for $700 million earlier this year, according to CoStar (CSGP) Group.
Jamestown purchased the leasehold for the 1.4 million-square-foot property, which once supported the nearby South Boston Army Base, in 2013 for $120 million, and spent over $200 million to reposition it as a creative office space. Anchored by the Boston Design Center, the building is now home to a mix of startups, design companies and life science tenants, including Reebok, Autodesk, America’s Test Kitchen, and Ginkgo Bioworks.
Related and Jamestown plan to add more lab and office space beginning in 2021 in order to expand its tenant base, and to attract more life science companies to the property, per a release from Jamestown.
“Related Beal and Jamestown have a longstanding history in the Eastern Seaport neighborhood’s life science sector and are committed to serving the strong demand we continue to see in this submarket,” Patrick Sweeney, managing director of Related Fund Management, said in a statement. “We look forward to collaborating on this next phase of the property, with an emphasis on enhancing and adapting the building to attract more lab tenants.”
Related Fund Management is the entity that purchased the stake, while Related Beal, the Boston-based development arm of Related, will manage and operate the property alongside Jamestown.
The IDB consists of two buildings at 17-25 Drydock Avenue, also known as 1 Design Center Place. Athletic apparel company Reebok is the largest tenant, with 220,000 square feet serving as its headquarters, and the property is 97 percent leased, according to CoStar.
Newmark (NMRK) represented Jamestown in the transaction, per a release from Jamestown.
