October 7, 2014 – Rubenstein Partners, L.P., a vertically integrated real estate investment manager specializing in value-added office property opportunities in the Eastern half of the United States, announced that its Rubenstein Properties Fund II L.P. has acquired 495 Business Center, a commercial office park located on approximately 84 acres in Tewksbury, MA. The purchase price for the property, located just 20 miles northeast of Boston, was approximately $13 million. David Rubenstein, Founder and Senior Managing Partner of Rubenstein Partners, made the announcement.
The property presently consists of four conjoined buildings totaling approximately 722,422 rentable square feet (RSF) at 200, 300, 400 and 500 Network Center Drive. The birthplace and original headquarters of Wang Computers, the property is presently multi-tenanted with a mix of uses including office, R&D, laboratory, manufacturing warehouse and flex. Rubenstein Partners, and its partner Genesis Management Group, intend a significant renovation and repositioning of the property into predominantly ‘creative class’ office space, leveraging the asset’s physical attributes such as tremendous ceiling heights, efficient floor plates and robust infrastructure such as tremendous floor loading capacity and abundant electrical power supply.
“Our focus as a firm is on adding value to office assets. Here, we see a great opportunity to enhance value, given the local demand for creative office space on one hand, and the physical attributes of the property given its historic use as R&D and manufacturing space on the other,” said David Rubenstein, Founder and Senior Managing Partner for the company.
“It’s unusual to find this combination of ceiling heights, open floors, and infrastructure in a multi-story building in this market, and, along with our planned renovations, this will differentiate the property from competing office supply. Through thoughtful redesign and targeted capital investment, we envision a rebirth of the asset into a center for innovation for this century,” added Deke Schultze, Senior Vice President of Rubenstein Partners and head of acquisitions for the New England region.
“The size and scale of the property is particularly attractive to large users that anticipate growth given the expansion opportunities it affords,” noted Paul C. Grant, President and CEO of Genesis.
495 Business Center is located directly off Interstate 495, less than two miles south of Interstate 93 and five miles north of Route 3, providing easy access by the workforce in the western and northern areas of metropolitan Boston and providing convenient access to Boston proper. The property is also directly served by the Lowell Regional Transit Authority (LRTA) with a transit stop on-site. Connection to the Boston CBD is via LRTA and commuter rail lines. Within a five minute drive of the property, tenants have access to a variety of dining options, multiple hotels, pharmacies, big box retailers, strip malls and other shopping centers.
Rubenstein Partners seeks to advise its fund clients to invest in office real estate assets, operating or ownership entities whose primary assets are office real estate and real estate that has office as a component, as well as to acquire and/or originate office-related debt and preferred equity. Fund II pursues value-add opportunities to acquire, reposition, develop, redevelop, manage, operate and/or dispose of office properties in the Eastern United States, with its primary focus on Boston; New York; Central/Northern New Jersey; Philadelphia; Wilmington; Baltimore; Suburban Maryland; Washington, D.C.; Northern Virginia; North Carolina; Atlanta and Florida, and secondary focus on the Midwestern markets on or east of the Mississippi River
Fund II expects to continue concentrating on assets located in Central Business Districts and their proximate suburban markets, with a preferred investment approach to partner with “best of class” local operators in the various sub-markets within its geographic footprint. With its final closing in April of 2014, Fund II raised $500 million in commitments from a diverse group of leading institutional investors, including educational endowments and a select group of corporate and public pension funds and high net worth individuals.
About Rubenstein Partners
Rubenstein Partners, founded in September 2005, is a private real estate investment management and advisory firm with operations throughout the Eastern United States. The firm is led by its founder, David Rubenstein, and a group of senior real estate executives, and is focused on directing and managing value-added office real estate investments, primarily in the Eastern United States. Rubenstein Partners’ predecessor company, The Rubenstein Company, LP and affiliates, founded in 1969, was one of the largest private owner operators of Class A office real estate in the Mid-Atlantic, owning and operating a portfolio of assets valued at approximately $1.2 billion at the time of its disposition in 2004. Since 2005, Rubenstein Partners has, on behalf of its investors and clients, invested in more than 8,500,000 sq. ft. of office real estate assets throughout the Eastern United States. For more information, visit www.rubensteinpartners.com.
###