Independencia-Synergy Partnership Acquire 100 Franklin St. for $69M

BOSTON—The 100 Franklin St. office building here has changed hands once again. A partnership of Clarion Partners and Synergy Investments has sold the storied 124,000-square-foot office-retain building to a partnership of Miami-based Independencia Asset Management LLC and Synergy Investments LLC of Boston for $69.2 million.

Originally completed in 1908, 100 Franklin St. formerly served as home to the Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Co. and the Boston Stock Exchange. The 123,950-square-foot, nine-story building is currently 95% leased to a diverse 25-tenant roster anchored by Webster Bank, Lux Research, the YMCA, Quantopian and ZappRx.

Back in 2015, in what Globest.com reported was the third sale of the property in 11 years, Synergy Investments sold the 100 Franklin St. office and retail building for $48.75 million to New York City-based Clarion Partners.

Newmark Knight Frank vice chairman Edward Maher, executive managing directors Matthew Pullen and James Tribble and director Samantha Hallowell of NKF’s Boston Capital Markets team, which is led by co-head of U.S. Capital Markets Robert Griffin, oversaw the transaction in conjunction with NKF senior managing director Jason Cameron and managing director Alison Cavanaugh.

“100 Franklin Street is part of a small but coveted set of Class B assets in Downtown Boston,” says NKF’s Maher. “Boasting an architecturally distinguished exterior combined with modern interior buildouts, the property is a consistently strong performer within one of the United States’ most dynamic core gateway markets.”

Independencia Asset Management is a real estate asset management firm headquartered in Miami with an additional office in Boston. Since incorporating in the United States in 2004, IAM has invested in more than 18 million square feet of core-plus and value-add office, retail and industrial assets in 19 states with 10 different local operating partners. To date, IAM has invested in more than $3 billion worth of real estate assets through 50 different special purpose entities. IAM’s current portfolio consists of approximately $2.3 billion of assets under management through 32 different SPEs.

100 Franklin St. will be incorporated into IAM’s “Fondo de Inversion Independencia Core US I,” which is a publicly-traded fund listed on the Chilean stock exchange. The $150-million open-ended investment vehicle was established in 2017 with an initial equity raise of $75 million plus an additional $45 million equity raised to-date. Previously, the fund has invested $50 million of the $120 million in two assets: Constitution Square, a 36,000-square-foot office building located in Berkeley, CA and 110 Atrium, a 237,000-square-foot office building located in Bellevue, WA.