Friday, July 18, 2014, 4:21pm
Blackstone Group’s Equity Office division is looking to further reduce its Greater Boston office portfolio with plans to sell 125 and 150 Cambridgepark Drive, which it acquired in 2011 for $81.5 million.
The private equity giant has hired CB Richard Ellis to market the two buildings totaling 470,000 square feet near the MBTA’s Alewife station. Tours of the two buildings began this week, according to Matthew George, a vice president with Equity Office.
Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, has been reducing its exposure to the Boston-area office market in the past year. In May, it agreed to sell a five-building office portfolio in downtown Boston and Cambridge to Oxford Properties Group of Toronto and J.P. Morgan Chase Co. for $2.1 billion.
Blackstone acquired the Alewife buildings in 2011, when they were approximately 50 percent leased. It launched a multi-million-dollar renovation program with amenities such as a Whole Foods café, bocce court and firepits, attracting new tech tenants such as BitSight Technologies and online payment company MineralTree. In May 2013, Intuit’s QuickBase division agreed to relocate from Waltham and leased 60,884 square feet at 150 Cambridgepark Drive.
The properties currently have a 90 percent occupancy rate, according to a real estate source.
Not including the Oxford deal, Blackstone owns six other office properties in Boston and Cambridge. No others are on the market at this time, George said.
On Thursday, Blackstone reported that its assets under management rose to $279 billion, up 21 percent from the previous year, as second-quarter profit more than doubled to $517 million.