311 Arsenal St.

Athenahealth Inc. has acquired the historic 11-building, 760,000-square-foot Arsenal on the Charles office campus in Watertown, Mass., from Harvard University for $168.5 million, it was announced yesterday. The purchase closed last Friday.

Avison Young, of Toronto, represented Athenahealth in what reportedly is the largest user-buyer transaction in Boston so far in 2013; Athenahealth began occupying space in the complex (initially 133,000 square feet) in 2005.

Avison Young principals Steve Cook in Boston and Suzanne Martinez in Chicago represented Athenahealth, and Harvard University represented itself.

Athenahealth provides cloud-based services for medical practice management, care coordination, medical billing and electronic health records.

The company has grown to become one of the area’s largest tech tenants and had been seeking up to 500,000 square feet for its corporate headquarters. The purchase reportedly followed a two-year search of properties and development sites throughout the Boston area by Avison Young and Athenahealth.

Given Athenahealth’s ongoing expansion requirements, Martinez said in a release, “long-term ownership is a financial home run when compared with a long-term lease.”

The choice reportedly was also driven by a lack of existing product and the high cost of new construction, coupled with the fact that Athenahealth’s employees were already happy with the Arsenal on the Charles’ location and amenities.

The campus is more than 90 percent leased. Athenahealth currently occupies 250,000 square feet, and other major tenants include Harvard Business School Publishing (100,000 square feet), Bright Horizons (90,000 square feet) and Boston Sports Clubs (50,000 square feet). The 29-acre complex is managed by The Beal Companies, Boston,

All 11 buildings on the campus were built around 1816 and rehabbed in 2000, Cook told Commercial Property Executive.

The buildings comprise three Class A offices (totaling 228,300 square feet), five Class B offices (totaling 485,750 square feet), two small Class C offices (totaling 22,680 square feet) and a Class B flex/R&D building of 13,000 square feet, according to information provided to CPE by Cook.

Harvard acquired the property in 2001, but after the economic downturn decided to use property closer to its main campus for institutional needs and instead leased the Arsenal on the Charles.

Although the complex has evolved to accommodate Digital Age high tech, it was once an example of Industrial Age high tech.

The campus is called Arsenal on the Charles, said Cook, because it was once part of the 90-plus-acre Watertown Arsenal, founded by the U.S. Army in 1816 as an ordnance storage depot. During the Civil War, the arsenal was expanded and began manufacturing gun carriages, and the complex was hugely expanded again during World War I.

Starting in 1968, the Army began to downsize its operations at Watertown, a process that was completed in 1995. One of the other redevelopments at the former arsenal is Arsenal Mall, a 502,000-square-foot shopping center owned by Simon Property Group.

Conergy, the Hamburg-based energy company, is expanding its footprint in Romania with the development of a 2- megawatt solar power plant in the Slobozia region. Currently under construction on a 10-acre site, the facility will include over 8,000 Conergy modules fabricated in Germany.

Upon completion, the plant is expected to generate more than 2,700 megawatt hours of electricity annually, enough energy to power about 770 households. Furthermore, the project will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1,400 tons annually.

The Slobozia solar project is the second announced in Romania this year by Conergy. In January, the company announced a 2.2-megawatt solar plant in Bobiceşti near the town of Craiova (pictured). The company is teaming up with Solanna Investment S.r.l. to develop the plant, which is expected to generate about 2,840 megawatt-hours annually.

“Currently, Romania is covering around two thirds of its electricity demand by power generated in the country itself,” said Alexander Gorski, a member of Conergy’s board. “Large-scale solar power plants will be playing an increasingly important role in helping to enable the country to also satisfy the rapidly rising demand for electricity in the future. We intend to expand our business in this segment further in the years to come.”

Conergy’s solar park will become profitable thanks to a quota model that employs so-called green certificates and power purchase agreements, the company said. Unlike other European countries, Romania does not offer feed-in tariffs as subsidies for solar power projects. Instead, the state requires energy providers and energy-intensive businesses to obtain 14 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. That share will rise by 1 percent annually through the decade and reach 19.5 percent by 2019. For this purpose, energy providers need a certain number of green certificates.

Providers that fall short of the threshold must purchase the emission certificates for 110 euros each to make up the difference. Power plants with a total capacity of 10 megawatts currently earn six certificates for each renewable megawatt-hour generated over the subsequent 15 years. Starting next year, plants will receive only three certificates per renewable megawatt-hour. Conergy’s plant will receive an estimated 16,200 green certificates annually for producing 2,700 megawatt-hours, or about 243,000 over 15 years.

Until 2025, prices for certificates traded on the market will remain in a fixed range between 27 and 55 euros. Any certificates that remain unsold in a given year will be purchased at the fixed minimum price by the national energy regulation authority, known by the acronym ANRE.  Power plant operators earn revenue from sales of both electricity and green certificates. For the Conergy plant, the sale of green certificates could yield 6.6 million to 13.4 million euros over 15 years.

At the 2013 Mortgage Bankers Association CREF/Multifamily Housing Conference, Marisha Clinton, director of research, Capital Markets, at Jones Lang LaSalle, names markets and industries that are on the “to watch” list for real estate investors.

 Borderfree.com expanded its quarters and extended its lease at 292 Madison Ave. in Manhattan. The e-commerce firm, a provider of technology and services for retailers to transact with consumers worldwide, is relocating one of its two leased spaces in the building to a larger floor. The move expands its footprint by about 5,100 square feet to 22,226 square feet, and is another indication that the owner’s strategy of pre-built renovations on the property to attract youthful technology firms is paying off.

Located at East 41^st Street, the 26-story structure was built in 1923 and has about 193,000 square feet of office space with some ground-floor retail. The building is in the center of the vibrant Midtown technology corridor.

Less than a year after moving into pre-built offices on the 5^th and 17^th floors, Borderfree.com will take over the 4^th floor and vacate the 17^th, providing a larger full-floor, contiguous two-story space. It will also extend its lease to seven years.

“Borderfree.com leased the two original spaces last year, including the 6,035 square-foot space on the 17^th floor, directly from floor plans based on the building’s first pre-built on the 18^th floor,” said William Payne in a press release, representing the building owner, 292 Madison Avenue Leasehold, L.L.C. “This expansion is a strong affirmation that our renovation and pre-built programs have been successful.” 

Mufson Partnership designed both of the 11,113-square-foot pre-built offices. The renovated floors include modern design elements and contemporary layouts featuring high-tech wiring, internet-ready modems, and many additional electrical outlets. 

“We are seeing a growth surge among well-established e-commerce and tech clients,” Gerald Nocera, a principal of asset manager Herald Square Properties, told Commercial Property Executive. “These are not start-ups.”

The renovations have yielded a modern aesthetic that also appeals to prospective tenants in many industries in addition to high-tech, he said. “We designed the remodeled space to showcase the assets of the property. The combination of an older building exterior combined with a modern environment in the interior is attractive to many firms,” he added.

Following a sale in 2011, the building has been rebranded with a marketing campaign that included a new logo, brochure, and updated website to attract financially sound e-commerce and high-tech tenants to expand beyond its professional services base.

One of the most ambitious development initiatives on the African continent recently held a sod cutting ceremony, in the presence of a number of state officials and business partners of the massive project. Spearheaded by rlg Communications, The Hope City development promises that a sprawling ICT-oriented community will take shape in Accra’s Donkonaa area featuring high-end office space, entertainment venues and a substantial residential component, all encased in a design that illustrates the country’s traditional heritage. The $10 billion development will have a three-year-long construction process after which Hope City will open its doors to some 25,000 residents and around 50,000 employees.

Likened by its advocates to Silicon Valley, Hope City will hopefully crystalize a community of tech professionals willing to live in this massive vertical city concept. HOPE, here an acronym that stands for Home, Office, People and Environment, is the central theme of the multi-billion dollar project, and also its mission statement. Set in one of the fastest growing cities of the African continent, the tech-oriented mixed-use park will capitalize on the interest of not only rlg Communications, but other major entities that have manifested their support for the project such as: Microsoft, GUMA Group and Nigerian officials.

Hope City’s specifics point out that the project will be able to accommodate around 25,000 residents and 50,000 employees in a gross developed area of around 13 million square feet. Designed by Italian architecture firm Open Building Research, a company that’s also heavily involved in the design process for Rio’s 2016 Olympic Park, Hope City’s six towers will be taking their design cues from the traditional rural architecture of Ghana’s northern regions. The tallest of the towers would have 75 levels and stand 885 feet high, making it the tallest construction on the continent. Two other towers will have heights of more than 700 feet and 60 stories, while the remaining three constructions will reach 500 feet, and offer 42 levels. All of the six towers will be interlocked through an intricate system of bridges allowing residents and employees to easily communicate with the rest of the hive-like development.

As previously noted, Hope City will be located in Donkonaa, a suburb located just 30 minutes away from Accra’s central area. The project will be constructed over the next three years on an empty site of approximately 24 acres. It will only be rivaled by the Konza Techno City, Kenya’s very own tech-oriented mega development, which will take shape in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. That rivaling project will be a mere 60 kilometers away from Hope City. Local officials and publications have, however, voiced their concerns that the project would not bring as many advantages to the city of Accra and the state of Ghana as much as other entities, and have called for measures to make sure that the $10 billion investment mainly benefit the country and the African continent.

An innovative system will capture and recycle waste heat at the $750 million, 1 million-square-foot Telus Garden mixed-use development in Downtown Vancouver, announced Telus Corp., the Vancouver-based Canadian telecommunications company and co-developer of the project. 

Operated by FortisBC, the regulated utility will cut the property’s carbon dioxide emissions 1 million kilograms annually by capturing and redistributing low-grade heat.

The innovative District Energy System, created in partnership with project developers Telus Corp. and Westbank, is among the first in Vancouver to use waste heat from a neighboring site to heat and cool a new development. The Telus Garden complex will be powered by waste heat from the company’s adjacent data center and the cooling system of the new office tower.

“The TELUS Garden District Energy System represents a shift in how we think about and utilize energy,” said Andrea Goertz, senior vice present strategic initiatives and communications for Vancouver-based Telus, in a news release. “By recovering energy that would normally be lost and putting it to good use, we are innovating through design to create one of the most environmentally-friendly urban communities in North America. It’s a powerful and unique system, and we are so pleased to be undertaking this landmark project with FortisBC, a company that shares our commitment to environmental sustainability and building healthy communities.”

Designed by Henriquez Partners Architects Telus Garden will be adjacent to Sky Train in Downtown Vancouver. The development will feature a 24-story, LEED Platinum office tower; a 53-story, 425-unit residential tower designed to LEED Gold standards; and retail space. Upon completion, Telus Garden will use at least 30 per cent less energy than a standard development of similar size. The office tower is scheduled for occupancy in June 2014; the residential building will follow in May 2015.

J.C. Goldenstein

A new site created by CREOpoint will offer an advanced customizable real time business intelligence hub exclusively for the global commercial real estate industry.

Launched on March 5, myCREOpoint.com was created in response to a desire by leaders in the real estate industry for a faster and more efficient way to help them mitigate risk, generate business and save time by eliminating the daily email overload but still seeing the tidbits of value they need.

“It’s real time business intelligence channels with an algorithm focused on commercial real estate,” J.C. Goldenstein, CREOpoint’s CEO, told Commercial Property Executive. “What we were hearing from our clients was that there were email overloads, and that’s why we created this. myCREOpoint tracks the topics that matter most to someone and there is no other solution that enables you to stay on top of exactly what you need from 10,000 property-relevant sources in minutes a day.”

The myCREOpoint.com platform has been under intensive development for over two years by a global team with support from an Advisory Board that includes Patrick Brennan, vice president Business Development Hearst and former publisher of FT.com; Phil Schlein, former board member of Apple Computers and R.H. Macy; Michael Evans, former global head of the real estate practice at Ernst & Young; and Andy Stone, CEO of Petra Capital Management.

“People want to personalize and filter out the noise and have it delivered in real-time on the mobile,” Goldenstein said. “What differentiates myCREOpoint is its ability to identify, qualify and present the most influential and best-industry sources by topic directly and instantly to your mobile device or desktop.”

The noise-canceling technology sorts through more than 40,000 property-relevant articles, videos, blogs, tweets and forum posts each day and filters out all redundant headlines, time-wasting tweets and false positives, bringing only the most relevant information to risk-conscious board members and professionals.

According to Goldenstein, myCREOpoint.com delivers more than 300 channels focused on commercial real estate topics such as CRE Debt, Private Equity Real Estate, Green Buildings and REIT IPOs; industry leaders like Sam Zell; companies such as Simon Property; and assets like the Empire State Building. After a free trial, for a small subscription fee, clean feeds of relevant information drawn from these sources are neatly organized and preset in each user’s own personalized news hub.

myCREOpoint is offering the CPE audience the CPE channel and the MIPIM channel during the course of the trade show. Regular subscriptions start at $14.95 (access to five of the most popular channels plus, through March 21, a complimentary trial of 15 more channels) to $995 a month for an all-inclusive platinum top of the line subscription. Additional channels can be purchased a la carte for $4.95 per month, or a pack of eight channels dedicated to a segment such as banks, brokers, consultants, professional service firms, REIMs, or REITs, among others, can be purchased for $19.95 a month.

J.C. Watson

CT Realty Investors and Xebec Realty Partners have big plans in Dallas–big multi-million-square-foot plans. The partners have acquired a 530-acre tract of land in the South Dallas Intermodal Hub for the development of Southport Logistics Park, a compound that will be able to accommodate 9 million square feet of premier distribution and e-commerce logistics space.

The seller of the acreage is a group that had owned the property since purchasing it from Union Valley Ranch L.P. in 2004. The site that will become home to Southport has location on its side. “The CT/Xebec property is adjacent to the 360-acre Union Pacific Intermodal Yard and proximate to the FedEx Ground Hub in Hutchins, and this infrastructure is critical to serving the needs of e-commerce fulfillment and distribution center user requirements,” J.C. Watson, CEO of CT Realty, told Commercial Property Executive.

But it’s not just the cross streets that will likely prove conducive to Southport’s success. Metropolitan Dallas itself is a prime location for such a project. “The greater [Dallas-Fort Worth] market is a significant industrial submarket and one of the largest inland ports in the country with over 700 million square feet of standing inventory, with net absorption over the last two years of greater than 25 million square feet,” Watson said.

CT Realty and Xebec plan to pepper Southport with speculative and build-to-suit facilities as small as 500,000 square feet and as large as 1.5 million square feet, with an eye on reeling in some of the country’s biggest industrial users. The partners have tapped commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc. to spearhead leasing and sales at Southport, and they expect the City of Los Angeles, home to the largest port in the country, to indirectly play a large role in the marketing effort. 

“Over 40 percent of inbound containers to the U.S. enter in Los Angeles and the global supply chain infrastructure that extends beyond these port enclosures includes unit trains and truck chassis,” Watson added. “Modern logistics warehouses and fulfillment facilities cluster in major population centers such as Dallas that are served by major intermodal yards which are an extension of the various seaports that serve the U.S., in particular, Los Angeles. We believe that South Dallas is the next logical submarket to evolve and will follow the successes seen in and near the intermodal facility in Northwest Dallas/Fort Worth.”

As it celebrates its 20^th birthday this month, chipmaker Nvidia announced plans to erect a 500,000-square-foot building on a 24-acre site in Santa Clara, Calif., the first part of an eventual 1 million-square-foot headquarters.

The development in the heart of Silicon Valley will be located on the south side of a parcel purchased by Nvidia in 2008. Several reports, including those in the San Jose Mercury News and Silicon Valley Business Journal, estimate the project will cost about $300 million.  Located west of San Tomas Expressway and bordered by Central Expressway and Walsh Avenue, it is across the street from the company’s existing 12-building, 1 million-square-foot campus.

Company founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told the global technology firm’s employees about the planned expansion in a blog post. Noting that Nvidia started with three people and now has 8,000 employees in 40 sites, Huang said the current headquarters “barely has a spare desk. We’re absolutely bursting at the seams.”

Huang added that the he and collaborators wanted the campus to be as distinctive as the company itself, which produces chips for computer graphics. Created by architecture firm Gensler, Huang said the design plan “harmonizes smart functionality and a shape that connects with and inspires our employees – a triangle, the fundamental building block of computer graphics.”

Other members of the team are SRGNC CRES, L.L.C., a division of Sares Regis Group of Northern California, L.P., which is the development manager; Webcor, the general contractor, and Tom Leader Studio, the landscape architects.

“We are excited to develop an inspiring and productive workplace for Nvidia,” Jeff Birdwell, president of commercial development at SRGNC, said in a news release. “Our specialized team is committed to incorporating innovation and high energy into the work environment to reflect Nvidia’s collaborative, energetic culture.”

Birdwell said construction of Phase 1 will begin in June with occupancy scheduled for July 2015. The first 500,000-square-foot building will have two levels of office and lab space and two levels of parking for about 1,800 vehicles below the building, one of which will be below ground level. The initial building will accommodate up to 2,500 people. There is no timetable for construction of the second 500,000-squre-foot building, he noted. The firm has about 4,000 workers at its current site comprised of about 3,300 employees and additional contractors and vendors.

Nvidia isn’t the only tech company expanding its space in Silicon Valley. Google, Apple and Facebook are just a few of the big names in expansion mode there. Some of the biggest lease transactions in the fourth quarter of 2012 occurred in Silicon Valley, according to Cassidy Turley’s Office Market Snapshot Bay Area Fourth Quarter 2012 report. Apple leased 188,000 square feet at 5405 Stevens Creek Blvd. in Santa Clara; Netflix leased 137,000 square feet at a new development planned for Albright Way in Los Gatos; and EMC took 95,722 square feet at 2811 Mission College Blvd. in Santa Clara. The Cassidy Turley report also noted that Santa Clara County led the Bay Area in occupancy growth for the fourth quarter with its vacancy falling from 13.8 percent to 12.8 percent.

Other tech firms are building new space like Nvidia, including Apple, which is planning a 2.8 million-square-foot headquarters in Cupertino with a design described as spaceship. LinkedIn Corp. has contracted with Kilroy Realty Corp. to build a 587,000-square-foot office complex on a 12-acre parcel in Sunnyvale, Calif. The 12-year leasing and development deal is worth $315 million. Kilroy is also investing about $200 million to construct a 314,000-square-foot office campus for Synopsys Inc. in Menlo Park.

Like us on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Commercial-Property-Executive/258033884191

Richard Walter, of Promontory

Promontory Interfinancial Network of Arlington, Va. launched yesterday Bank Assetpoint (www.bankassetpoint.com), a nationwide online marketplace that aims to connect banks and other parties looking to buy or sell unwanted bank assets, including bank-owned commercial real estate.

Participants already listed on the site, which is currently in beta, include First Financial Network, CBRE, Colliers International, Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, Berkadia, Cassidy Turley, Sperry Van Ness and Transwestern.

Bankers, brokers and other entities can use Bank Assetpoint to post or search listings for a wide range of bank assets, according to Promontory, including performing or distressed CRE, performing and nonperforming loans, and loan participations.

In addition, banks can use the marketplace to find service providers to help them with asset appraisals, due diligence and similar services. And through an online community, Bank Assetpoint lets banks search for brokers and loan sale advisors based on specific search criteria, such as asset type, price, location and expertise.

Bank Assetpoint also includes a virtual data room that allows sellers or their brokers to post and control access to confidential content for use by buyers in performing due diligence.

“Banks face a significant challenge today, owning nearly half a trillion dollars in unwanted assets, such as commercial real estate and nonperforming loans,” Mark P. Jacobsen, Promontory’s president and CEO, said in a press release. To help banks and their brokers dispose of these assets, he added, Bank Assetpoint has waived most posting fees through the end of 2013 and all posting fees for assets originated before 2009.

“We’ve been working on this for probably over two years,” Richard Walter, senior managing director at Promontory, told Commercial Property Executive. He said that focus groups with some of Promontory’s 3,000 member banks revealed that they needed a more efficient way to sell off unwanted assets, including distressed CRE, and that they were often dissatisfied with the prices they were getting for their assets.

“Pretty much any loan category works” for the site, including performing, nonperforming, sub-performing and modified, said Walter, who was president of Faris Lee Investments, Irvine, Calif., for 12 years.

The site will be adding functionality about every two to three weeks, he said, based mostly on input from participants, and it will be probably four to six months until the final form is reached.

There is no subscription fee to use Bank Assetpoint, Walter said, and even when posting fees are charged, starting in 2014, CRE postings will be a nominal $40 each. The site is expected to be revenue-generating “down the road,” he said. “Promontory is a long-term player. This is a long-term play.”

Walter also added that while the site’s goal is to connect sellers with buyers and/or with those who can help them sell assets, the transactions themselves won’t be happening at the site.

Finally, he pointed out that the site is also intended for buyers of loans who are looking to diversify their portfolios without having to add in-house origination staff. “The real goal here is to encourage the buyers,” he said. “It’s pretty fragmented out there today. We’re just trying to add some efficiency.”