Samuels to Rehab Alewife Property Into Office Space

Having successfully leased up its first Cambridge acquisition, Samuels Property Group has purchased 54 Cambridge Park Dr., with plans to renovate the 26,000-sf building into class A office space. The Boston-based opportunity investment group paid $3.2 million for the building, which is located in the city’s Alewife District.

Insignia/ESG brokered the deal on behalf of the sellers, Spinelli Industrial & Commercial Development, with Insignia senior managing director Gregory Lucas and Darryl Morse also procuring the buyer.

Samuels Property Group was formed last year by developer Jonathan Samuels and attorney Francis Mastroianni. The firm’s first deal was the $11.8 million purchase of two office/retail buildings in Cambridge’s Central Square. The adjoining properties have since been given a multi-million dollar facelift, an effort that paid off last month when Samuels leased 70,000 sf of office space to Harvard University.

Calls to Samuels were not returned, but a broker familiar with the deal says the two-story brick structure should attract considerable attention from space-starved office tenants. Although Alewife is not considered the city’s core office market, it has rebounded dramatically since the early 1990s, when vacancy rates soared into the 25% range. Today, the 1.38 million-sf submarket has barely 10,000 sf available, giving it a 0.7% vacancy rate. Rents have jumped sharply as well to where Alewife is now averaging $50 per sf.