By Steve Adams | Banker & Tradesman Staff | Sep 24, 2018
GENSLER
Hobbs Brook Management is the latest developer targeting the central Route 128 submarket for growth in the office and life science sectors, as it begins marketing a new 507,000-square-foot building in Waltham’s Hobbs Brook Park.
The Gensler-designed building – which would become the largest contiguous office building on Route 128 – would replace a pair of aging office buildings totaling 258,000 square feet at 225 Wyman St.
“With the increased biotech and lab interest, combined with the fact that the current design of these buildings is somewhat antiquated, we felt it was a somewhat underutilized site,” Hobbs Brook COO Kevin Casey said. “There is a lack of large contiguous buildings on Route 128 right now, and we’d be creating our own market with this.”
The occupancy rate within the 16-building Hobbs Brook Park is approximately 92 percent, said Patricia Holland, Hobbs Brook’s leasing director.
The office and lab-capable structure will be designed to meet LEED Silver certification, and offer a parking ratio of 3.5 per 1,000 square feet.
Wyman Street Advisors Managing Director Charles “Chip” Batchelder is the exclusive leasing agent.
Hobbs Brook Management will market the property to a single user or two tenants initially, with a lease of approximately 200,000 square feet needed to begin construction of the internally financed project, Casey said.
Suburban office tenants have shown a preference for new construction or significantly repositioned buildings, which have attracted many of the largest recent lease transactions on Route 128.
Cambridge Savings Bank recently leased 76,000 square feet at Hobbs Brook’s 81 Wyman St. for a new operations center that will replace its back offices in Cambridge and Arlington. The building formerly served as the Thermo Fisher headquarters. And in June, ZoomInfo leased 74,000 square feet at Boston Properties’ recently updated 170 Tracer Lane in Waltham for a new headquarters.
Vacancies in the Route 128 submarket remained stable at 11.6 percent in the third quarter, according to a report by Perry Brokerage Assoc., with asking rents for class A space rising 1.8 percent to $33.01 per square foot.
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