Re: Fan Pier
Developer: Fan Pier building will not be mothballed
Boston Business Journal - by Michelle Hillman
Friday, November 28, 2008
David Reilly wants to make this crystal clear: The rumor whipping around the city faster than the recent cold front about construction of the first building on Fan Pier is absolutely ?ludicrous.?
Reilly is president and chief executive officer of Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors LLC ? part of the team that is developing Fan Pier with The Fallon Co. and Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.
Construction of the initial 500,000-square-foot office building at One Marina Drive on the South Boston waterfront is well under way. And despite the fact that the lack of liquidity has put a chokehold on negotiations with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. to lease as much as 1 million square feet in two yet-to-be-constructed buildings, Reilly insists one has nothing to do with the other. Variations abound, but the general gist of the rumor has the developers of Fan Pier stopping construction on the first building and mothballing the structure.
Reilly is none too pleased.
?What kind of idiot would be out rumoring that we would be closing this property down or ceasing construction?? Reilly said during a phone interview last week. ?They don?t understand the concepts of what you do on the development side. It would be illogical, in a market that we believe in, to shut down construction. I don?t know who would do that.?
As Reilly explains, the $200 million construction loan for the building was secured long ago with Anglo-Irish Bank Corp. And the financial partners backing Fan Pier, Cornerstone and Massachusetts Mutual, have no intention to pull the plug on the $320 million office building or the 3 million-square-foot, mixed-use development.
Sources familiar with the terms of the loan said it stipulates that the building must be built or the developers face being in default of the loan.
?There is no question the capital is in place,? Reilly said.
Reilly said he and his partners paid $115 million for Fan Pier with plans to develop the 21 acres of waterfront property over the course of 10 to 15 years.
Despite dismal market conditions, that plan hasn?t changed, he said.
Reilly said the first building will be ?topped off? in the next couple of weeks, signaling an end to the steel portion of the building. The building, which was started without a tenant, or on a speculative basis, is slated to open in the first quarter of 2010.
?We actually think that this building is going to hit the market at a pretty good time because a lot of development that was planned is not going forward,? Reilly said. ?If there?s any resurgence, which we think there will be, we think we?re pretty well poised.?
Last September Fallon held a groundbreaking for the first office building when tenant demand for office space in the city remained strong.
Since then, Fallon has been unable to secure a tenant for the building but has had to press on with construction. An uncertain economy is making it difficult for developers like Fallon to pry companies from their offices because moving is often a costly endeavor.
The Fallon Co. plans to be the first tenant to move into the building when it?s finished. The Fallon Co. is located at 2 Seaport Lane at the World Trade Center in South Boston.
?We?re moving our office to the building either at the end of 2009 or 2010 when the building is open,? Joseph Fallon said in a phone interview last week.
The rumor mill indicated as late as last week that the building would be wrapped and that the installation of systems like HVAC and elevator banks would be postponed until construction resumed.
Reilly said to stop construction midway through would be ?one of the craziest things to do? since it would cause a whole host of problems with rust and mold and lead to much more costly repairs.
While the first building will continue to be built as planned, Reilly said the next two buildings that were originally slated to be part of the first phase are not moving forward because they could not secure financing needed for construction.
?That is stalled because there is virtually no construction loan capability of that size in the U.S. today,? Reilly said. ?That?s all subject obviously to the return of some normalcy to the capital markets.?
Reilly said if the markets begin to stabilize then they may consider resuming construction the next two buildings.
?We can?t start the next two until we can put the pieces together,? said Reilly. ?You tell me when that?s going to be.?
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