BOSTON– JLL’s Capital Markets completed the sale of The Xchange at Bedford, a 479,000-square-foot creative R&D and life science campus situated near amenity-rich Burlington, MA, at Route 3 and minutes from Route 128.
The firm represented the seller, The Davis Companies. The buying partnership was Jumbo Capital Management, a value-add real estate firm, and Sound Mark Partners, a debt and equity investment management firm. The buyer paid $107.75 million for the eight-building, state-of-the-art technology campus and JLL will remain as the property’s exclusive leasing agent on behalf of Jumbo Capital.
The JLL sales team was led by Managing Director, Frank Petz, Senior Vice President, Matthew Sherry and Associate, Scott Carpenter. JLL Managing Directors, Matthew Daniels and Christopher Lawrence will continue to handle the project’s leasing.
At the time of sale, The Xchange was 89 percent leased to five tenants and anchored by iRobot’s 272,000 long-term lease. iRobot has expanded by nearly 89,000 square feet in the last three years and, in 2017, extended its term through April 2030.
“Working closely with Gensler Architects to reimagine the park, we dramatically improved the overall image of the property and the individual buildings, as well as the sense of community for the tenants” stated Matt Katz, Vice President of Asset Management for The Davis Companies. “This included centralizing the amenities, adding green space and gathering areas, a glass exterior for more natural light and significantly enhancing the parking ratio via a land swap with the Massachusetts Department of Public Works. Through these efforts, we were able to better serve the needs of our tenants and create an opportunity to expand and extend the lease of our principal tenant, iRobot”.
“In a very short period of time, Jumbo Capital Management has successfully acquired over 4.1 million square feet across asset classes, bringing Jumbo’s assets under management to $775 million,” said Jumbo Senior Managing Director Brad Spencer.
Jumbo’s Director of Acquisitions Adam Fischer added: “The Xchange at Bedford is a well-located R&D and lab campus. Anchored by iRobot’s mission-critical headquarters, the campus is home to innovation across multiple industries. With Cambridge as the center for biopharma, we believe Route 3 is becoming the hub for robotics and artificial intelligence.”
“There was a broad and deep interest in The Xchange, which further proves the high level of demand for quality product in the Boston suburbs,” said Petz. “The Davis Companies did a great job modernizing the asset for flexible tenant use, including technology, biotech and life sciences.”
JLL Capital Markets is a full-service global provider of capital solutions for real estate investors and occupiers. The firm’s in-depth local market and global investor knowledge delivers the best-in-class solutions for clients — whether a sale, financing, repositioning, advisory or recapitalization execution. In 2017 alone, the firm’s 2,000 Capital Markets specialists completed $170 billion in investment sale and debt and equity transactions globally.
