The Braintree-based Flatley Co. has pared numerous properties in recent years, including several significant sales in 2007. That activity was headlined by a $500 million dispatch of 10 New England retail assets, but a Marriott Hotel at the developer's Crown Colony Office Park in Quincy also changed hands for $116 million in May, and Flatley also this spring harvested a 10-building portfolio on the South Shore for $52 million. On the other side of the aisle, GlobeSt.com last week reported that Flatley has agreed to buy another real estate property, the 700,000-sf Hewlett-Packard corporate campus in Nashua, NH for more than $45 million. Calls to Flatley to discuss that deal and the Boston sales were not returned.

Synergy, meanwhile, has been in an aggressive acquisitions mode this year, not only buying the Flatley assets, but also announcing today the purchase of 133 Portland St. in Boston's North Station market. After being acquired in North Station's dark ages of 1995 for less than $50 per sf, 133 Portland St. fetched four times that amount in a $6 million sale by Edgewood Capital Advisors. According to participants in the transaction, the upside reflects the office submarket's revival following the Big Dig project, plus a growing ardor for Class B buildings to take advantage of a suddenly resurgent office market. The Big Dig project depressed not only the hulking Central Artery, but also an elevated trolley line that for decades had cast shadows upon North Station, including Portland St.

Calling 133 Portland St., "a solid acquisition in an emerging district," Synergy VP Dee Minnock adds that the six-story, 30,000-sf building "will complement our ownership of other assets within the Bulfinch Triangle," referring to a section of the district known for its historic buildings and unique architecture. Synergy last year bought 141 Portland St., a 23,000-sf office/retail building secured in an equity deal with Irish and US investors. Investors also sent cash from Ireland to participate in the latest trio of sales, Synergy indicates.