PEABODY, MA-Barely a year after acquiring a 134,000-sf flex/industrial building in this North Shore community, a Winchester real estate investment firm has traded the asset for $12.9 million. The building at 13 Centennial Dr. is fully leased to ADP Investor Communications Services Inc.

"We saw the strength of the investment market and felt the time was right to sell based on the high-quality tenant, the institutional quality of the asset and the term remaining on the lease," says Chub Whitten, a principal for RFP Juniper Centennial LLC, whose firm acquired the building vacant in June 2006 for $7.8 million. That equates to $58 per sf, versus the $96 per sf paid by the buyer, Columbia Massachusetts Centennial Industrial LLC.

Broker Greg Klemmer negotiated the sale on behalf of RFP Juniper. "They did a great job repositioning the building," says the principal of Klemmer Associates, another Winchester-based firm. ADP signed on in October for a seven-year term.

Given the stability of the building and a location just off Route 128 in the master-planned Centennial Park, the property attracted substantial interest from buyers, according to Whitten. "We were very pleased with the offers," he says, with several said to be near the winning mark. According to Whitten, Columbia was selected because they "showed the best opportunity to close in a timely fashion." The LLC buying the 13 Centennial Dr. lists Lincoln Advisory Group of Chicago as its address. Efforts to contact officials for the real estate advisory firm were unsuccessful by press deadline.

Besides negotiating the sale of 13 Centennial Dr., Klemmer and colleague Tim Brodigan also were listing agents when the ADP lease was inked. Two other nearby buildings in Peabody's Centennial Park have changed hands this summer, as previously reported in GlobeSt.com on June 28th. Those buildings at 9 Centennial Dr. and 10 Technology Dr. were acquired for a combined price of $12.1 million by a Brookline investor.