Boston Properties Inks Another Major Lease at Colorado Center

Boston Properties has been busy signing leases at its Los Angeles office campuses. Its latest success: a 351,000-square-foot lease deal at Colorado Center, a 1.2 million-square-foot office campus in Santa Monica. A major entertainment tenant signed the seven-year lease.

The office market in Los Angeles is suffering from the pandemic, but you might not know it if you look at Boston Properties’ activity this year. Earlier this month, the office owner signed a lease expansion with a major tech company at the Santa Monica Business Park in Santa Monica, a 1.2 million-square-foot office campus at 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. The unnamed tech company signed a 144,000-square-foot lease. At the time, Jonathan Lange, SVP of the Los Angeles Region at Boston Properties, said there is strong office demand from high-profile tech and entertainment companies, and this most recent lease underscores the same trend.

In April, the Boston Properties signed a 72,000-square-foot lease at Colorado Center. The company’s director of global real estate said that Roku was looking for a place to “connect, collaborate, and innovate,” and the Colorado Center fit that description. The lease deal had a 10-year term.

Boston Properties’ activity isn’t restricted to lease transactions. In April, the company entered a JV with two unnamed sovereign wealth funds to form a $2 billion investment venture. The goal of the JV is to better position Boston Properties to compete in its core markets by enhancing financial resources, execution speed and return. Boston Properties will commit up to $1, and it will have the opportunity to invest one-third of the equity in each identified deal at their discretion. In addition to providing all real-estate services, Boston Properties will commit its acquisition deal flow to the partnership subject to a specific carve-out.

Capping off the company’s wild few months, Boston Properties expanded its portfolio of life science properties with the purchase of two lab facilities for $100 million in cash. The 153,000 square-feet properties are located in Waltham, MA., and were sold by an affiliate of Montana Avenue Capital Partners. The two properties are fully leased to a pharmaceutical company. They are located next to another property owned by the REIT, 200 West Street, a 272,000 square feet office—a portion of which was recently converted to lab space—that is 100% leased to Translate Bio.