Prominent Office Tower in Boston is Traded
Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash
53 State Street, dubbed ‘Exchange Place’ is a Class-A office tower with over 1.2 million square feet of premium office space. The 40 story tower was developed by Olympia & York Co in 1985 and was fully renovated in 1998. Located in the heart of Boston’s Financial District, with convenient access to Government Center, Quincy Market and a plethora of other destinations, 53 State is an iconic skyscraper home to the city’s most notable tenants; including Holl Holliday, Acquia, The Boston Globe & Nixon Peabody.
One of Boston’s biggest and most prominent office buildings traded hands Thursday.
53 State Street — home to Hill Holliday, software firm Acquia, and The Boston Globe, among other companies — sold for $845 million to an investment group that includes Allianz Real Estate, the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board, and Beacon Capital Partners.
At $682 per square foot, the price for the 40-story glass tower is slightly lower than smaller, newer buildings in the Seaport that have sold in recent years. But it’s still a 38 percent hike over the $610 million that Swiss investment bank UBS paid to buy the building in 2011.
The tower, which sits at the busy corner of Congress and State streets, was one of several large Financial District towers to lose tenants to new buildings in the Seaport in recent years — both law firm Goodwin and Boston Consulting Group moved out of 53 State.
The vacant spaces were quickly filled, however, through leases to companies that include the Globe and, most recently, law firm Nixon Peabody, which took four floors earlier this year.
The 1.24-million-square-foot building — one of the largest office buildings in the city — is now 93 percent leased.
Allianz is the latest major European institutional investor to buy into Boston’s office market. The project is the second large real estate investment in Boston for PRIM, which manages the $70 billion Massachusetts State Pension Fund.
Source: Boston Globe / Tim Logan (12/06/2018)
