Trade Center Towers Look to Fill Sublease Space

"We're able to get better rents now," Eileen Newman of Fidelity Investments, tells GlobeSt.com. Fidelity, through its real estate arm Pembroke Real Estate, backed the venture to develop the building along with World Trade Center West. "The office market in Boston is still very tight. We don't foresee any problems filling that space."

A few weeks after moving in earlier this year, Breakaway Solutions decided it had to sublease its 100,000 sf, which was taken back by the building. A source close to the deal tells GlobeSt.com that it was "in the best interests of the company to control the space." Not long after that, Cabot Corp., an old time local firm, gave back 66,000 sf, as did a number of other high-tech related companies.

According to Bill Collins, a senior vice president with Spaulding & Slye Colliers and the broker for the building, there is a lot of interest in the space. Collins would not specify exactly who has expressed interest, but he did emphasize that the "potential tenants are very serious."

An industry source confirms for GlobeSt.com that Breakaway's contract, which was signed a year and a half ago, was for $46.50 per sf. This source adds that that space would go now for $56 to $58 per sf. "Many of the tech tenants did deals over a year ago in the $30s per sf," notes the source. "Some of this space is actually making money now. You don't have a feeding frenzy of tenants anymore but you have a more reasonable ratio." The high-tech bust has not affected asking prices in any area here, he adds.

World Trade Center West is slated to be completed in the summer of 2002 and it is, according to Newman, 55% pre-leased. Its tenants, are decidedly not high tech; the law firm of Foley Hoag & Eliot is leasing 175,000 sf and Nutter McLennan & Fish, also a law firm, is leasing 110,000.