Comcast Leases 60,000 SF in Spec Office

WALTHAM, MA-Comcast Inc. has signed one of the bigger leases of 2007 in suburban Boston, with the telecommunications services provider committing to more than 60,000 sf at 309 Waverly Oaks Rd. The four-story, 143,000-sf building was developed on spec by Duffy Properties LLC.

The agreement comes after a slow opening to the year for Boston’s most dynamic suburban office market, with Jones Lang LaSalle indicating there was more than 48,000 sf of negative absorption in the Massachusetts Turnpike/Route 128 corridor during the opening quarter. As a result, the vacancy rate for the 19.1-million-sf submarket ticked up slightly to 9.1%, according to JLL reports.

Comcast officials did not return calls to detail their plans for the property, or say how many employees will operate from the building. Efforts to contact brokers for the tenant, Alex Dauria and Jay Nugent of JLL, were unsuccessful, but Duffy Properties principal Steven Duffy says the space will be used as a call center, with Comcast expected to consolidate similar offices in the region to the site. Duffy could not say which offices are involved, but tells GlobeSt.com that the company will occupy all of the second floor and three-quarters of the ground floor.