The Bay Colony office complex in Waltham has seen a flurry of a new leasing activity in recent months, part of a broader uptick in tenant expansions in Greater Boston’s suburbs.
Craig Douglas
Managing editor/online vertical products and research- Boston Business Journal
Email
| Twitter
The Bay State’s commercial real estate market showed widespread, albeit modest, gains in the second quarter as a number of tenants flocked to the value play of the suburbs.
While the uptick in leasing activity reflected a broader expansion and need for new space among businesses in the region, a general lack of new development and construction in Eastern Massachusetts equated to a zero-sum game for a handful of submarkets; while areas such as Marlborough and Waltham have seen solid net absorption in the hundreds-of-thousands-of-square-feet, other office clusters, particularly the Back Bay’s Class B community of properties, have been stung by a recent outflow of some big tenants.
Among the hotter markets at the moment is the city of Marlborough. Staggered by business closures and an exodus of major tenants, Marlborough was the poster child for the commercial real estate market’s hangover following the investment binge leading up to the 2008 credit crash.
The city’s office-vacancy rate was 21 percent at the end of 2010, and that was before Fidelity Investments announced it was emptying its 1 million-square-foot campus along Puritan Way. By mid 2011, Marlborough’s vacancy rate had surged well above the 35 percent threshold.
But then things changed. In June 2011, Atlantic Management sealed a deal to pay $9 million the former Hewlett-Packard campus in Marlborough. It has since steadily filled the massive footprint with tenants such as Quest Diagnostics, which this year took over around 100,000 square feet. And early last year The TJX Cos. Inc. agreed to buy Fidelity’s old space for around $72 million, a move that was soon followed by news that Boston Scientific Corp. would be moving its headquarters from Natick to the old Lucent Technology campus near the I-290 and I-495 interchange.
Open all references in tabs: [1 – 6]