Pegasystems Settles into 162 KSF in Cambridge, Mass.

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Pegasystems Inc. has a new headquarters. The business process management software solutions provider just completed its relocation to One Rogers St. in Cambridge, Mass., having snapped up 162,000 square feet of premier office space in a very tight market that is growing even tighter.

Pegasystems committed to the 252,000-square-foot One Rogers, which adjoins One Charles Park, in July 2011, when the company signed a 12-year lease with property owner Principal Global Investors. The software firm has set up shop on the top three floors at One Rogers, bringing the six-story building’s occupancy up to 93 percent.

The move marks both a relocation and an expansion for Pegasystems, which left behind approximately 101,000 square feet of space less than a half-mile away at 101 Main St. However, given the current state of the Cambridge office market, there’s every chance that the square footage will be snapped up in the near future. As noted in a third quarter report by commercial real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle, which represented Principal Global in last year’s lease agreement with Pegasystems, there are several letters of intent in the market, and Cambridge Innovation Center is considering expanding its digs at 101 Main by taking on an additional 45,000 square feet.

Office space in Cambridge is dwindling. The popular Boston submarket posted a direct vacancy rate of just 7.3 percent in the third quarter, according to JLL.

“The key drivers in the Cambridge market are technology and biotechnology,” John Osten, executive vice president with JLL, told Commercial Property Executive. “On the tech side, Cambridge-born and bred companies like Pegasystems and InterSystems help drive the market, as do companies like Google and Microsoft, which have leased more than a half-million square feet over the last five years.”

Cambridge has most certainly rebounded from any negative impact incurred by economic downturn. “We never really had a big dip from ’07,” Osten said. “We see Cambridge as its own little market; it never really took a hit because the recession was a financial recession. We were in a healthy place to begin with, now there’s very little vacancy in Cambridge.”