Calare Scores Big on Industrial Building Sale

25 Tucker Drive is now fully leased.

LEOMINSTER, MA—In a little over three years, Hudson, MA-based Calare Properties nearly tripled its money on a 588,000-square-foot industrial property here. Calare sold 25 Tucker Drive here in a deal valued at $31.5 million. The firm acquired the vacant building on 24 acres in a corporate disposition transaction in December 2012 for $11.65 million, a price a company official at the time described as “a fraction of its replacement cost.” Since the purchase, Calare spent approximately $4 million in property improvements that included upgrades to the warehouse and office spaces as well as tenant build-outs. In May 2014 Calare inked a long-term triple net lease deal with Affordable Interior Systems for 401,316 square feet of space. A year later AIS triple net leased an additional 184,274 square feet to bring the property, which was originally built in 1982, to fully leased.  Shortly after the second deal with AIS, Calare decided to market the property for sale and retained Stan Johnson Company to find a buyer. The property was purchased by private investors from the Midwest, according to Bryan Blake , president and executive director of Calare Properties. Stan Johnson Company’s Britton Burdette , director, and Mollie Alteri, associate director, represented Calare. The transaction closed on March 11. Blake says that Calare saw the potential in the building when it acquired it fully vacant at the end of 2012, noting that the building’s attributes include its location of less than a third of a mile from Route 190, with direct access to I-495 and the Massachusetts Turnpike. In addition the manufacturing, distribution and office facility offers 28- foot ceilings, 11,500 kVA of available power, 43 dock doors, and CSX rail service. Back in late 2012 the property was the only large block of industrial space (over 400,000 square feet) available in the area. In the last two years, industrial leasing has been strong in the Greater Boston area and that combined with the large transactions that took place at 25 Tucker, led to the significant sale transaction of the property, particularly for an industrial asset outside of the I-495 loop. Blake adds that the company planned to own the property for three to four years and the firm and its investors were very pleased with the sale price it was able to secure for the asset. Calare owns nearly 8 million square feet of industrial space in Greater Boston, including other properties in Leominster, and approximately 15 million square feet of commercial space, primarily in the Northeast. Last year, Calare was very active on the acquisitions front in Massachusetts. In September, the firm purchased three fully-leased industrial buildings in Middleborough totaling 273,000 square feet in the Campanelli Business Park for approximately $25.4 million. In November, Calare acquired the 84,000-square-foot industrial building at 95 Shawmut Road in Canton, MA and finished off the year with the purchase of a 40,000-square-foot industrial/flex building at 480 Paramount Drive in Raynham, MA. No financial details of the two transactions were released. The company appears to be looking to once again add to its local portfolio. “We are pinpointing opportunities where we think we can find well-located assets that fit the profile of our investors,” Blake says. He says that the firm is currently working on two possible acquisitions in the Greater Boston area that could close in the next 60 to 90 days.