Tom Andrews ’87 wants to keep character of One Kendall Square
Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE) has closed on its $725 million acquisition of One Kendall Square in Cambridge, marking the year’s largest single-asset real estate transaction.
Alexandria, a life-sciences and technology real estate investment trust with an office in Cambridge, now has a total portfolio of around 6.3 million square feet in Greater Boston. Its $725 million acquisition of One Kendall Square marks an 83 percent increase in price from DivcoWest’s $395 million purchase of the mixed-use science and technology campus in January 2014.
Though Alexandria has yet to finalize the project’s design, two prospective tenants are exploring the possibility of pre-leasing space, Andrews said. The two prospective tenants are life-science companies that currently have space in Cambridge, he said, and have requested information about leasing between half to nearly all of the planned 172,500 square feet.
“They want to grow their footprint in Cambridge, and they see this as an opportunity to expand and relocate into a new facility,” Andrews said. “It demonstrates the level of interest in the tenant community that’s out there in terms of committing to space where design is not even completed yet.”
Andrews said Alexandria wants to keep the character of One Kendall Square but “improve upon it over time” by investing in older buildings in need of repair.
