BOSTON — M&T Bank has signed a 39,000-square-foot office lease at Winthrop Center, an 812,000-square-foot mixed-use complex in downtown Boston. George O’Connor and Thomas Ashe of Cushman & Wakefield represented M&T Bank, which plans to move in this fall, in the lease negotiations. CBRE represented the landlord, New York City-based Millennium Partners. Other tenants at Winthrop Center include Deloitte, McKinsey & Company and ECG Management Consultants.
NEW YORK CITY — Berkadia has secured the title of top agency lender for 2023. The firm closed roughly $6.6 billion in Freddie Mac loans and $5.3 billion in Fannie Mae loans, good for the first and second place, respectively, among qualified government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) lenders. Berkadia was also the top HUD lender in terms of volume, closing $1.2 billion in HUD-insured loans in 2023.
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Property Owners Recalibrate Expectations Following Financing Challenge, Shifting Vacancy Rates
High costs, modulating occupancies and a lack of financing options reshaped the industrial, office, retail and multifamily sectors in the fourth quarter of 2023, signaling the determining factors for 2024, according to Lee & Associates’ 2023 Q4 North America Market Report. The industrial sector saw stabilizing tenant demand — the number of new buildings delivered increased in the fourth quarter, while new construction starts slowed. Meanwhile, the office sector’s struggles deepened as more than half of the office leases signed pre-2020 approach their expiration by 2026. With low-rate loans maturing into a high-rate environment, the factors troubling the office sector seem insurmountable in this decade. In the retail market, low vacancies did not lead to booming construction in that sector in the last quarter of 2023 — financing costs plus land and labor costs have hampered new development in spite of high demand. Finally, the health of multifamily markets is tied closely to geography. Sun Belt multifamily properties and their Midwest and Northeastern market counterparts are seeing reversals from the multifamily trends of 2021: formerly fast-growing Sun Belt markets are experiencing slowed rent growth or rent decline, while rent growth for slower-growing, major North and Midwestern metros has grown steadily. Lee & Associates …
NEW YORK CITY — Locally based firm Innovo Property Group (IPG) is nearing completion of Borden Studios, a 220,000-square-foot film and TV production facility in the Long Island City area of Queens. The facility is part of The Borden Complex, a 900,000-square-foot industrial project that is a redevelopment of a former warehouse of online grocer FreshDirect. Borden Studios will feature four sound stages ranging in size from 11,800 to 16,200 square feet, 43,000 square feet of office space, 56,000 square feet of support space and more than 8,800 square feet of outdoor amenity and gathering space. Full completion is slated for the spring. IPG acquired the asset in January 2019 with Atalaya Capital Management and Nan Fung Group for $75 million and subsequently received a $155 million construction loan in early 2021. Long-term financing was secured in summer 2022, and the development team topped out the project in February 2023.
MIDDLESEX, N.J. — NAI DiLeo-Bram & Co. has arranged the $8.6 million sale of a 69,750-square-foot retail center located in Middlesex. A 57,000-square-foot SuperFresh grocery store anchors the property, which sits on a 3.9-acre site. The center also features a 6,115-square-foot liquor store and 6,300 square feet of second-floor office space. Marc Shein of NAI DiLeo-Bram represented the undisclosed seller in the transaction. Bennett Realty & Development represented the buyer.
BRIDGEPORT, CONN. — Regional brokerage firm Northeast Private Client Group (NEPCG) has negotiated the $4.3 million sale of a 36-unit apartment building in the southern coastal Connecticut city of Bridgeport. According to Apartments.com, the three-story building was originally constructed in 1920 and offers one- and two-bedroom units. Brad Balletto, Robert Paterno, Rich Edwards and Jeff Wright of NEPCG represented the seller and procured the buyer in the transaction. Both parties requested anonymity.
RONKONKOMA, N.Y. — Lumber Plus, a distributor of Brazilian woods and flooring products, has signed a 33,000-square-foot industrial lease in the Long Island community of Ronkonkoma. Metropolitan Realty Associates owns the building at 2175 Fifth Ave. after buying it for $6.4 million in 2022. Frank Frizalone, Nick Gallipoli, Thomas Deluca, John Giannuzzi and Ryan Korzekwinski of Cushman & Wakefield represented both parties in the lease negotiations. Lumber Plus plans to move in during the second quarter.
WILMINGTON, DEL. — German discount grocer Aldi will open a 32,262-square-foot store in Wilmington. Aldi will occupy the site at 4130 Concord Pike, which spans 3.1 acres, for the next 10 years. Jim O’Hara and Neil Killian of NAI Emory Hill Real Estate Services represented the landlord, an entity doing business as LBD Wilmington, in the lease negotiations. Jason Block of MCS represented Aldi.
ELMONT, N.Y. — The Feil Organization has refinanced Home Depot Shopping Center, a 269,490-square-foot property located at 600 Hempstead Turnpike in the Long Island community of Elmont. Feil has owned the property since 1992. At the time of the loan closing, the center was fully leased, with Marshalls and Target serving as the other anchor tenants. Estreich & Co. arranged the $23.5 million loan for the refinancing through Principal Asset Management on behalf of Feil.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Newmark has brokered the sale of a 242,477-square-foot life sciences building located at 640 Memorial Drive across the Charles River from Boston in Cambridge. The building was originally constructed in 1913 as an automobile manufacturing plant. Robert Griffin, Edward Maher, Matthew Pullen, James Tribble, Samantha Hallowell and William Sleeper of Newmark represented the seller, an affiliate of Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc., in the transaction. The team, along with Steven Golubchik of Newmark, also procured the buyer, a partnership between Bain Capital Real Estate and Phase 3 Real Estate Partners.