Harbor Garage bidders pared; sale seems near
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | October 11, 2007
The Harbor Garage, a seven-story block of concrete on the Boston waterfront near the New England Aquarium, could have a new owner by the end of the week.
The firm handling the sale said there are a handful of bidders, from an initial group of 15, that remain in the running.
"We are very, very close to a buyer here," Rob Griffin, president of Cushman & Wakefield of Massachusetts Inc., said yesterday at a meeting of the Appraisal Institute and the Commercial Brokers Association.
Donald J. Chiofaro, co-owner of the nearby International Place towers, has long had his eye on the garage as a development site. The garage has Boston Harbor on one side and the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway - whose parks are now finally opening up to public use - on the other.
Chiofaro this week confirmed he still hopes to capture the garage and its potential for a hotel, office, residential, or mixed-use project. "But I can't tell you anything more than that," he said.
Others in the third and final round of bidding on the garage are Gale International, which is redeveloping the old Filene's building; Legatt McCall Properties LLC, which just completed One First Street residences in East Cambridge; Brookfield Properties of New York, which owns 75 State Street in Boston; and Northwood Investors LLC of Greenwich, Conn., according to a Boston real estate executive who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to discuss the marketing.
None of the other bidders would comment.
All the bidders offered about the same amount of money for the property, made more valuable with the rapid redevelopment of Boston's waterfront property, Griffin said.
"It's going to come down to terms," he said, meaning which bidder is the most attractive in terms of financing, readiness to close quickly, or other requirements specific to the property.
The 1,380-car garage, built in the 1960s by architect I.M. Pei in the so-called brutalist style, went on the market in June.
Cushman & Wakefield said at the time it could bring $170 million or more. It has about 30,000 square feet of retail space, seven floors above ground, and two below.
The 1.3-acre property has been owned since 2002 by InterPark, a national operator of parking garages.
A complicating factor to the sale is that Harbor Towers, a two-building residential complex next to the garage, leases spaces in the garage for up to 400 of its residents.
Griffin and others said yesterday that while 2006 was a record year for investment sales in Boston, 2007 was on track to surpass it until the credit crunch of late summer slowed activity somewhat. The problems were concentrated in the residential loan markets but resulted in jitters throughout the economy and made potential buyers of commercial properties more cautious, executives on the panel said.
Nevertheless, the garage - which sometimes gives families visiting the New England Aquarium sticker shock with its $32-a-day prices - was "very well received," Griffin said. "We've had a ton of activity."
