Eastdil To Sell 1M-SF CrossPoint Park

LOWELL, MA-One of suburban Boston’s most iconic office developments is reportedly the latest major real estate asset being put on the sales block, with industry sources claiming that Eastdil Secured LLC has been tapped as broker of CrossPoint Towers. The three-building, 1.2-million-sf park is owned jointly by DivcoWest Properties LLC and Yale Properties USA.

“It is out there,” says an investment specialist familiar with CrossPoint, which is known locally both for its physical dominance on the Merrimack Valley landscape, and as the former headquarters of Wang Laboratories. The campus rose on the fortunes of that 1980s technology giant only to fall in lockstep when the firm was overrun by competing technology and collapse of the hardware computer sector. By 1994, the erstwhile Wang Towers was an aging white elephant unable to fetch even $1 million at an auction held that February by the lender. The cavernous, empty complex was scooped up for 35 cents per sf by a group of entrepreneurial real estate professionals from Boston.

That sale would prove to be the steal of the decade in New England’s CRE market. Not only was the region on the throes of a seven-year rebound, the new owners crafted agreements with city officials and assembled a marketing program that led to several key leases, including Nynex Corp. In September 1998, the re-branded CrossPoint had stabilized enough to fetch $101 million from a partnership of Yale and the Blackstone Group, yielding a windfall for the sellers and a second chance for the office park.