IQHQ Buys $125M Cambridge Life Sciences Campus

Alewife Park. Image courtesy of IQHQ Inc.

IQHQ Inc. continues to enhance its portfolio of Boston-area assets at a steady pace with the acquisition of Alewife Park, a life sciences campus in Cambridge, Mass. The life sciences real estate development company purchased the 290,000-square-foot property from GCP Applied Technologies in a $125 million sale-leaseback transaction.

READ ALSO: Life Sciences Real Estate Thrives Amid Pandemic

Located on a 27-acre site at 62 Whittemore Ave., Alewife Park serves as GCP’s corporate headquarters and features office, laboratory and R&D space spanning 10 office and industrial buildings. The low-rise structures, developed between 1902 and 1948, range in size from 1,300 square feet to 76,600 square feet. The transit-oriented development sits directly across from an MBTA rail station in the burgeoning Alewife submarket. “Alewife is on the investment radar. Its connection to the Red Line has driven increased interest for those in Kendall Square looking for rent relief and firms in the suburbs looking for T access,” according to a second quarter 2020 report by Colliers International.

Newmark Knight Frank’s Boston Capital Markets Group arranged the Alewife Park transaction on behalf of GCP. Under the terms of the purchase and sale agreement, the construction products technologies company will continue to maintain its headquarters at Alewife Park under an 18-month, rent-free lease agreement with IQHQ. The deal also provides the tenant with the option to extend its stay at the property for an additional six months. If all goes as planned, the sale transaction will close in late July or early August of 2020.

Rapid expansion

IQHQ emerged as the new incarnation of the former Creative Science Properties Inc. in February 2020, with a $770 million equity raise under its belt for investment in assets in Boston, San Francisco, San Diego and the Golden Triangle in the U.K. Since then, the company has been highly active in the pursuit of acquisitions in the Greater Boston area, which is among the top three life sciences markets in the U.S. and among the leading life sciences clusters in the world. The newly rebranded company made its inaugural investment with the $270 million purchase of 109 Brookline Ave., a 295,000-square-foot lab and office building in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston. And in May, IQHQ added the 200,000-square-foot Innovation Park in Andover, Mass., to its holdings in a $35.9 million deal.