Sasaki has founda Boston home, signing a 16-year lease for the majority ofspace at an office building near the Chinatown T stop.
MC Real Estate Partners purchased the largely vacant 76K SF 110Chauncy St. for $27.8M this month, and signed Sasaki tooccupy 64K SF in the top seven floors of the eight-story building, MCREannounced Monday.
The Watertown-based design firm will lead the redesign of 110 Chauncy,which was built in the late 1890s, into a modern office that is expected tohouse approximately 250 Sasaki employees by early 2022, according to astatement.
“We jumped at the chance to partner with MCRE on pioneering a sensitive,sustainable, and flexible recasting of historic 110 Chauncy as a model for thefuture of workplace design in Boston and beyond,” Sasaki Workplace DesignPrincipal Liz von Goeler said in the statement.
The acquisition was announced in partnership with a private capital partner,and Suffolk County records indicate a new mortgage for the address withBerkshire Bank. The seller of 110 Chauncy St., Chauncy Property HoldingsLLC, is tied to the operators of the Buckminster Hotel in Boston’s Fenwayneighborhood and didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday.
The financial terms of Sasaki’s lease were undisclosed, and a spokesman for MCRE did not immediately return a request for more information. Asking rents for CBD assets sat at $64.85 per SF at the end of 2020, Newmark reported.
The deal comes one month after Sasaki announced the sale of its 97KSF Watertown office for $23M to Berkeley Investments, which will pursue alife sciences conversion.
Sasaki will lead the redesign of both its old Watertown building and newdowntown HQ, with improvements at 110 Chauncy including enhancedHVAC systems, bicycle storage and showers for commuters, and office spaceon the first and basement floors.
MCRE’s portfolio spans New York City, Washington, D.C., and Boston,where it also owns the 72K SF 201-207 South St. in the Leather District and485 Massachusetts Ave., a 41K SF building in Cambridge’s Central Square.
Sasaki’s lease represents one of the market’s largest deals this year after adifficult 2020 marked by record negative absorption and sublease availability. Sasaki’slease trails in size only Amazon ‘smassive 630K SF commitment in January to a newoffice building by WS Development in the Seaport.