Michael Smith, a principal with Spaulding & Slye, tells GlobeSt.com that the locally based realty brokerage has been retained to market the 40 Broad St. property which Prudential acquired when it bought out a German realty investment group about four years ago.
The 260,000-sf building could see vacancy rates as high as 70% as leases expire and tenants relocate. One of the property's major tenants, architects Shepley Bullfinch Richardson and Abbot, is vacating the building and moving to the waterfront where it will take 66,418 sf in the World Trade Center East tower. The firm's departure will leave more than one-fifth of the building empty. There is also the planned departure of another major tenant, finance and asset management firm Gordon Brothers Group LLC and the expiration of additional leases.
Smith says the building, which sits just one block from the Rose Kennedy Greenway, could remain as office space or be converted to residential or hotel use. Given the pending vacancies and the heavy demand for investment properties, Smith says, Prudential opted to put the building up for sale. "They see what is going on in the marketplace and from a management standpoint, before re-letting to office tenants, they wanted to explore the possibility of selling," he says.
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