"We've made our stamp on the market and I think we'll continue to do so," says Justin Krebs, a principal at Normandy, adding that the company plans to invest another $600 million in the Boston market over the next two years.
The company's latest buy, the 285,000-sf, 19.4 acre Lexington campus, was a coupe of sorts, acquired in an off-market deal with seller Essex River Ventures LLC, which had just put the four-building property on the market with The Trammell Crow Co. At least 90 requests for confidentiality agreements had already been signed on the property, Krebs says, when Normandy asked to put in an offer. Essex River Ventures, which bought the Lexington campus three years ago for $35.3 million, agreed to Normandy's request and a deal was struck.
The building, which is about 65% occupied by a number of high-tech and biotech firms, was a fitting acquisition for the company, which prides itself on buying value-added properties in strong markets that can easily be repositioned.Krebs says Normandy plans to make some minor landscape and mechanical improvements to the campus, and will begin a full court push to have the property fully leased within the next 12 months.
"We feel Lexington has really emerged from Cambridge as a strong draw for the bio-pharmaceutical and high-tech markets," he says, adding that Normandy is already in negotiations with several firms to lease more than 100,000 sf of its newly acquired asset. Normandy entered the Boston market in December with the multimillion-dollar acquisition of a fully leased office property 150 Norfolk St. in Quincy. Since then, the firm has been on a buying spree, gobbling up properties at a rapid pace.
In March, Normandy acquired its second asset with the $13.4-million purchase of a 115,000-sf office building at 400 Fifth Ave. in Waltham, and in April paid $140 million for a five-building, 804,959-sf portfolio of suburban office properties in the core Route 128 market. Earlier this month, Normandy also closed on 1 Technology Dr. in Peabody, an 188,000-sf industrial building that it acquired from Wakefield-based Franklin Street Properties for $16 million.
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