Bedford Business Park Lands LifeCare Lease

BEDFORD, MA-The deals continue to flow here at Bedford Business Park. Fresh on the heels of a major lease signed last month with iRobot Corp., landlord Boston Properties is preparing to welcome the regional division of LifeCare Centers of America, a nationally known nursing home operator that will take space at the park’s 14 Crosby Dr. The entity, LifeCare at Home of Massachusetts, will relocate in a fast-track move next week from the company’s current offices in adjacent Burlington.

According to Lincoln Property Co. broker Ned Halloran, who represented the tenant with colleague Gian Starita, “the goal was to stay as close as possible” to LifeCare at Home’s current facility to avoid employee disruption. The firm was also intent on finding quality space at a reasonable rate, and Halloran says Bedford Business Park was able to deliver on both counts. While the broker declined to offer specifics of the 11,000-sf deal beyond confirming it is a seven-year pact, rental rates for the Route 3 corridor are averaging $17.72 per sf, according to the latest figures from Jones Lang LaSalle. That is the lowest mark of any submarket tracked in the JLL survey, a review that puts the vacancy rate for the Bedford area at 22.7%.

The LifeCare pact is one of several tendered recently along the Route 3 corridor, and Halloran says he anticipates additional deals will be struck in the coming months. “It has been pretty hot lately,” he says, citing both a price differential from the core Route 128 market that Route 3 feeds into on its southern flank, plus an improving economy that is reviving the technology sector the area has been dependent on for the past several decades.