JV Sells Boston Office, Lab Complex for $330M

Reservoir Woods East. Image courtesy of Newmark Knight Frank

A venture including affiliates of Marcus Partners and The Davis Cos. has sold Reservoir Woods East, an office and laboratory complex in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Mass., which includes the potential for more life sciences development, to an unidentified buyer for $330 million.

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Reservoir Woods East, part of the approximately 1.3 million-square-foot campus that comprises office, research and development, retail, health and wellness offerings, has two components: 40 Sylvan Road and 50-60 Sylvan Road. 40 Sylvan Road is a three-story, 312,845-square-foot office building that is leased on a long-term basis to National Grid for its U.S. headquarters. 50-60 Sylvan Road is a two-building, 202,428-square-foot laboratory complex that features a short-term lease to a subsidiary of Verizon Laboratories. It also offers the potential to develop an additional 400,000 square feet of rentable space. The property has a structured parking garage with 410 spaces and surface parking lots with a total of 1,319 spaces.

Newmark Knight Frank orchestrated the sale of the campus. NKF Co-Head of U.S. Capital Markets Robert Griffin, Vice Chairman Edward Maher, Executive Managing Director Matthew Pullen and Managing Director Samantha Hallowell of the firm’s Boston Capital Markets Group represented the seller and procured the buyer. NKF Senior Financial Analyst William Sleeper provided financial analysis support.

Maher said in a prepared statement Reservoir Woods East offers a combination of near-term cash flow and long-term development upside in the Greater Boston market. The property also presents an opportunity for the buyer to benefit from the momentum of the Waltham-Lexington life sciences cluster, which he said has become an extension of the Cambridge, Mass., life sciences cluster.

Reservoir Woods East is less than a mile from I-95, Route 128 and Route 2, and less than 5 miles from I-90. It offers a shuttle service to the MBTA Red Line at Alewife Station in Cambridge.

Earlier deals

Both Marcus Partners and The Davis Cos. have disposed of other properties in the past year. In  September 2019, The Davis Cos. and another partner, Invesco Real Estate, agreed to sell a five-story, 224,000-square-foot life sciences office building at 35 Cambridge Park Drive in Cambridge to HCP for $332.5 million.

In July 2019, Marcus Partners sold a Westport, Conn., office complex totaling 84,000 square feet to Waterway Capital for $30 million. The company had purchased the two-building property in 2014 and invested $5 million in capital improvements that included upgrading lobbies, common areas, windows and the façade.