Sale at Tufts in Boston Nets $112M for Daymark

Two medical-office buildings located on the Tufts University campus near Downtown Boston have just moved off the books of Daymark Realty Advisors and into the hands of ProMed Properties for a purchase price of $112 million.

August 17, 2011
By Nicholas Ziegler, News Editor

The Biewend Building

Two medical-office buildings located on the Tufts University campus near Downtown Boston have just moved off the books of Daymark Realty Advisors and into the hands of ProMed Properties for a purchase price of $112 million. The Biewend and Tupper Buildings, both 14-story offices, are 100 percent leased to Tufts through 2017. Grubb & Ellis Co. represented Daymark and procured the buyer.

“These properties are crucial to Tufts Medical Center’s operations,” Phil Giunta, executive vice president with Grubb & Ellis told Commercial Property Executive. “The Tupper building is all laboratory space funded by grants for the National Institute for Health, and the other is space for clinical and orthopedic doctors. No matter what happens to the economy, people will get sick and will need medical facilities.”

The buildings, originally purchased as a sale-leaseback with Tufts in 2007, will likely be less affected by economic headwinds than typical commercial real estate. “Medical-office properties in the central business district [of Boston] have been more insulated from the economic downturn than properties located off-campus or in suburban locales,” Mike Waddell, executive vice president for asset management of Grubb & Ellis, said.

And Boston is proving to be a hot spot in the national real estate scene. According to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle, the area has seen tightening fundamentals for four consecutive quarters and certain submarkets including the Financial District, Downtown and the Back Bay — Tufts is located between the Back Bay and Financial District – are seeing recoveries “well outpacing the region.”

“The Boston commercial space has improved drastically in the last 12 months,” said Giunta, who brokered the deal with his partner, Grubb & Ellis senior vice president Anthony Biette. “The medical community continues to expand, vacancy rates are down, lease rates are up. Boston, as a whole, is looking up.”

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