BOSTON – Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, L.P. (HFF) announced the sale of the Quad, a transitioning life science campus located in Cambridge, MA. Comprising four buildings (75 Moulton Street, 10 Wilson Avenue, 40 Smith Place and 75 Smith Place), the Quad totals 199,487 square feet of space set on roughly 8.6 acres.
The HFF team arranged the sale of the property on behalf of The Davis Companies and procured the buyer, Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager on behalf of one of its institutional clients. The Davis Companies will continue to manage the asset and oversee its redevelopment.
Boston is one of the strongest life science clusters in the world and Cambridge represents its epicenter. As market conditions in East Cambridge continue to be marked by soaring rents and low vacancy rates, new life sciences nodes have emerged – West Cambridge being a prime example. Tenants and investors are seeking to recreate the same qualities that originally attracted them to Kendall Square with an urban, in-fill location and convenient pedestrian access to transit and amenities.
The Quad is located just minutes from Alewife Station, the anchor of the MBTA’s Red Line, which connects the region’s most innovative minds in West Cambridge, Harvard Square, Kendall Square and Seaport. The Quad’s West Cambridge neighborhood also presents a thriving live/work/play dynamic with a broad amenity base, including Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Starbucks and Chipotle and over 20 mid-upscale restaurants.
The HFF investment advisory team representing the seller included Coleman Benedict, Christopher Phaneuf, Ben Sayles and Kerry Hawkins.
“The opportunity to invest in the Quad was a highly competitive bidding experience and is emblematic of a trend we are seeing in the market,” said Hawkins. “Right now, institutional investors recognize the importance of investing within this sector and are eager to direct capital into life science assets.”
The Davis Companies is an integrated real estate investment, development and management firm headquartered in Boston that has invested more than $4 billion in gross asset value through real estate equity, debt, and fixed-income securities. A combination of capital markets, development and management expertise allows The Davis Companies to nimbly tackle complex opportunities. Directly, and with its valued partners, The Davis Companies currently owns a real estate portfolio of approximately 12 million square feet of office, multifamily, retail, hospitality, light industrial, healthcare and bioscience properties across the Eastern United States.
Invesco Real Estate is a global leader in the real estate investment management business with $66.4 billion in real estate assets under management, 471 employees and 21 regional offices across the U.S., Europe and Asia (as of 12/31/17). Invesco Real Estate has been actively investing in core, value-add and opportunistic real estate strategies since 1992. Invesco Real Estate is a business name of Invesco Advisers, Inc., an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Invesco Ltd. Invesco Ltd. is an independent investment management firm dedicated to delivering an investment experience that helps people get more out of life.
