Athenahealth eyes buying Watertown office park from Harvard University

Sources say Harvard University is negotiating the sale of Arsenal on the Charles to athenahealth.

Sources say Harvard University is negotiating the sale of Arsenal on the Charles to athenahealth.








Thomas Grillo
Real Estate Editor- Boston Business Journal

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In what could be the one of the biggest real estate deals of the year, Harvard University is negotiating the sale of Arsenal on the Charles — an 11-building office campus in Watertown, Mass. — to athenahealth, the Boston Business Journal has learned.

Harvard bought the 765,524-square-foot park, which includes athenahealth’s offices at 311 Arsenal St., from O’Neill Properties Group in 2001 for $162.6 million. Commercial real estate sources said the deal could fetch north of $200 million for the university.

Arsenal on the Charles is one of the largest speculative office redevelopments in Greater Boston. The historic buildings served for nearly 200 years as a U.S. Army Arsenal where cannons and artillery were manufactured. Among the two-dozen tenants are Bright Horizons (Nasdaq: BFAM), Communispace, Harvard Business School Publishing and the Boston Sports Club.

One source told the Boston Business Journal that athenahealth (Nasdaq: ATHN), a health information technology company, is already talking to tenants about vacating their leases to make way for the firm that employs 2,200 people, including 900 at its Watertown headquarters.

Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said his company is seeking to expand to as much as 1 million square, three times the 330,000-square-foot space it is are leasing from Harvard.

“I haven’t made a decision yet,” Bush said. “There are five possibilities, but in my mind it’s down to three.”

Those three, Bush said, are expanding in Watertown, moving to the yet-to-be-built New Balance complex in Brighton, or leasing space at the Landmark Center near Fenway park, which is expected to be vacated by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Bush said a decision would be made by year’s end, and it “all depends on pricing.”



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