424,000-SF Lease in Place for Suburban Boston BTS
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. has signed a 424,000-square-foot lease with Gutierrez Co., effectively paving the way for development of its build-to-suit office and R&D facility at the Burlington Research Center in the suburban Boston town of Burlington.
By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. has signed a 424,000-square-foot lease with Gutierrez Co., effectively paving the way for development of its build-to-suit office and R&D facility at the Burlington Research Center in the suburban Boston town of Burlington.
Commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc. represented the tenant in the transaction, while Richards Barry Joyce & Partners stood in for the landlord. The build-to-suit lease at Burlington Research Center, which is situated 12 miles outside of downtown Boston, off the well-traveled Route 128, will allow Green Mountain’s Keurig division to consolidate area staff under one roof. Currently, the company’s employees operate from its home base in nearby Reading and two other locations in Wakefield and Woburn.
The agreement also provides the coffee and coffeemaker company with the option to spread its wings into a third phase building that has already been permitted for development at the site. Occupying 16 acres, Burlington Research Center can accommodate as much as 590,000 square feet of space.
Given the state of the Route 128 North submarket, where all three of the company’s current facilities are located, its decision to pursue a build-to-suit deal appears to have been the wisest, if not the only, choice. Large contiguous blocks of premier space are hard to come by in the submarket. During the first quarter, only three blocks of space over 100,000 square feet were up for grabs, with the largest option only 223,000 square feet.
A wave of build-to-suit projects may very well be on the horizon. In April, tech firm Red Hat Inc. announced that it had contracted Gutierrez to develop a 100,000-square-foot addition to its existing Gutierrez-constructed build-to-suit at Westford Technology Park West in Westford, Mass. At the time, James Lipscomb, a senior vice president with RB&J, told Commercial Property Executive, “There is a trend of good-credit companies that are looking to have first-class facilities, and due to the nature of the aging inventory in the area, we might see more build-to-suits in the future.”
