Calare Properties And Hackman Capital Win “Best In Boston Real Estate” Award

May 31, 2013

The Boston Business Journal awarded Calare Properties, Inc. and Hackman Capital Partners, LLC the top honor last week in the Industrial/Flex Use category for the acquisition and repositioning of 112 Barnum Road, the former Evergreen Solar facility, in Devens, MA. “We are extremely honored to be recognized by the BBJ and our peers. This deal showcases our strategy of selecting and repositioning distressed and unvalued properties while assembling a great team to realize each building’s greatest value,” said Bill Manley, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Calare Properties. Mr. Manley, who accepted the award on behalf of the partnership, credited his legal team with helping unravel the myriad entanglements involved with the transaction, and construction partner Jay Dacey of Integrated Builders for converting the structure. He also thanked CBRE and Grubb & Ellis for their hard work on the sale and leasing of the property.

Located within the Barnum Business Park, the facility was originally constructed in 2010 by Evergreen Solar at the cost of approximately $196 million and included enhanced high-capacity features such as emergency diesel generators, internal wastewater treatment, and chemical bunkers, in addition to specialized air abatement and water cooling systems. The partnership acquired the property in April 2012 at a significant reduction to replacement cost. The complex transaction took about a year to complete, as it involved an intricate bankruptcy with multiple creditors, a building that was built on leased land, and separate transactions to acquire the land from MassDevelopment and the building from the bankruptcy estate.

Since its acquisition, the property has been demised to accommodate two tenants while preserving its unique infrastructure and systems. “The expertise provided by Jay Dacey and Integrated Builders was pivotal to our repositioning of this state-of- the-art manufacturing facility and made it possible to not only attract our first tenant, but also maximize the market potential of this asset for future tenants,” said Mr. Manley. The previously vacant property is now 48% leased to Saint-Gobain, the French multi-national corporation. The company plans to invest millions of dollars in the facility and hire 90 new employees. Calare and Hackman project that the property will be fully leased by the end of the year.

Calare Properties and Hackman Capital are major players in the Northeast industrial real estate market and, through affiliated entities, own more than 8.8 million square feet in the Northeast.