116 Huntington Ave. Flips to Beacon Capital

BOSTON-In a deal that has been rumored for weeks, the New Boston Fund Inc. quietly finalized the sale of 116 Huntington Avenue to Beacon Capital Partners. The 14-story, 264,086-sf office tower fetched $77.3 million.The property had previously been reported as going to ING Clarion earlier this year, but Peter Joseph, principal at Trammell Crow, tells Globest.com. “We fielded over 17 offers from institutions, opportunity funds, and local investors, and these are the first and only people that we entered into an agreement with.”The building was designed by architects CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares, and developed by JMB Urban in 1991. Since then it has been sold four times: to IDX Corp. for $23 million in 1994, which sold it to American Towers in 1999 for $55 million, then to New Boston Fund in 2002 for $68 million. New Boston then flipped it to Beacon Capital last week for another relatively quick turnaround.The acquisition of an office building in a market where office space vacancy rates are at an all-time high may not seem prudent to some, but Joseph points out that the building is “93% occupied.” Major tenants include IDX Systems, American Towers, Segal Investors and Sonesta International. Speculation that the office tower would be converted to residential units was refuted by Joseph and another source close to the situation, who tells GlobeSt.com “that is absolutely, positively not going to happen.”116 Huntington Ave. adds another thoroughbred asset to the Beacon Capital Partners stable, joining other major acquisitions such as the John Hancock Tower, 501 Boylston St, and 200 Berkeley. The firm purchased the property with capital from its most recent fund, Beacon Capital Strategic Partners III, the largest office-focused equity fund in the US, which has $1 billion of committed equity capital. The transaction was brokered by Trammell Crow principal James F. McCaffrey, who represented the seller and procured the buyer. McCaffrey also brokered the previous sale of the property from American Tower to the New Boston Fund in 2002.