"It was just time to sell," explains Mark Dickinson of Dickinson Development Corp., whose firm purchased the property in 2000 and undertook an extensive renovation before striking a 10-year lease with Hyster that runs through 2011. Hyster, which recently spent $1 million to upgrade 159 Rangeway Rd., also has two five-year extensions and controlled right of first refusal on any sale, an option the materials handling company did not exercise when Dickinson decided to harvest the asset. Instead, Dickinson retained CB Richard Ellis to trade the building, with the agreement involving the Hampshire Cos. brokered by CBRE principal Gary Lemire and Patrick Cavanagh. Constructed in 1988, 159 Rangeway Rd. is a single-story building featuring 14 loading docks and 12,000 sf of office space on a seven-acre site at Exit 28 of Route 3.

Quincy based Dickinson Development is a well-known New England firm experienced in multiple product types, including hotel, office and retail. The firm's most visible project is the Crossing at Walkers Brook in Reading, a reclaimed landfill abutting Route 128 that today sports a retail lifestyle center and IMAX Theater. About 20% of the firm's real estate activities involve industrial properties, estimates Dickinson, with projects in such communities as East Boston, Randolph and in Laconia, NH. Dickinson says the Route 3 industrial market has performed well in recent years, aided partly by an expansion of that roadway that has eased congestion for vehicles traveling north to New Hampshire and south to Route 128.

The Hampshire Cos. is a real estate fund manager that has already acquired 10 properties in 2008 in such East Coast markets as Connecticut, New Jersey and New York and out west in Colorado and Wyoming. Those purchases have ranged from industrial and medical-use buildings to office and retail assets. Calls to the company were not returned by press deadline. It is unclear what investment vehicle the Hampshire Cos. tapped for 159 Rangeway Rd., but the firm has been most active with its Hampshire Partners Fund VII, a commingled, discretionary fund focused on growth corridors of the northeast and mid-Atlantic. The Hampshire Cos. already and now owns more than 500,000 sf in four Massachusetts communities: Billerica, Devens, North Andover and Weymouth.