It was another busy week for Lee Partners. We scheduled and participated in a second New Hampshire tour of “flex” manufacturing and office space for a defense contractor currently located in Southern New Hampshire with a second office in South East Massachusetts. The CEO indicated that the company needs to expand and consolidate the two offices plus a third company office – to be acquired – into a new facility in the Nashua market area of New Hampshire.
Part of the requirement is to build out some specialty manufacturing rooms and also have direct access to a shipping area loading dock. Above standard HVAC and power is part of the requirement. We toured alternatives in Nashua and Hudson – with additional sites to be investigated
in the next two weeks before the end of the year. For this project we have teamed up with a very professional New Hampshire commercial real estate broker – Mike Monks. Mike’s knowledge of the southern New Hampshire commercial market is without parallel. It is a real pleasure to be working with Mike on this assignment. We will be able to report more on this effort over the next many months.
We ended the week with another client visit/tour of a site near the Needham – Dedham boundary line off of Rt 128. The location will be part of a newly permitted medical campus within the town of Dedham. This is a very exciting project that has significant large institutional interest within the expansion plans of Boston hospitals and medical institutions. The tour started with a meeting with the developer’s office and then proceeded to the site. In this case our developer/owner is a very experienced general contractor familiar with the organization’s needs. I have high hopes for this build to suit opportunity – although it will also require many months and possibly a year or two to obtain all approvals to build a new facility. This time-frame is not unusual for commercial real estate projects in Eastern Massachusetts that require build-to-suit buildings. One retail site I worked on in the town of Westford, MA took over eight years to market/sell and re-develop into a McDonald’s outlet – from its original listing for sale. Let’s hope this potential build-to-suit will not take that long – for the sake of all parties!