Calare Cleans Up in $5M Industrial Deal

HUDSON, MA-Some value-add investments provide returns sooner—and greater—than others, and 555 Main St. would seem to fit that mode. The 108,000-sf industrial building has now traded for the second time since Jan. 2007 but at a sharply higher price than the $1.3 million paid barely a year ago by locally based Calare Properties, which has just divested the asset for $5.3 million.

Calare’s turnaround of the once vacant Arrow Automotive headquarters was even more immediate, as a full-building tenant signed on soon after 555 Main St. changed hands in the 2007 sale. The tenant committed to a 10-year deal and two options that each provide for additional five-year extensions. Calare’s approach was measured, however, with the firm monitoring the property for three years before determining the time was right to strike. A former brownfields site, 555 Main St. has undergone a cleanup and monitoring process that began in the early 1990s.

The new owner of the asset is Lowfield Realty Group 555 Main St. Hudson LLC, another Massachusetts company whose agent is listed as Vincent CampoBasso of Leominster. Efforts to contact the buyer and Calare principal William Manley by press deadline were unsuccessful. One source says there is room for expansion of 555 Main St., but it is unclear how much new space could be heaped upon the 8.5-acre parcel.

While it may have delivered an impressive return, 555 Main St. was just one of the significant ventures involving Calare Properties last year. The firm was also a partner in the blockbuster $517 million acquisition of a nationwide industrial portfolio sold last summer by Equity Industrial Partners. Calare teamed with KBS Realty Advisors of Newport Beach, CA, and Hackman Capital to purchase dozens of properties en masse in what proved to be one of the last mega-deals completed prior to the market slowdown that continues to linger.