The doldrums affecting the Boston office market seem to have little impact on One Congress Street, which is fully occupied and the beneficiary of a massive refinancing.
Carr Properties and National Real Estate Advisors secured a $650 million loan package to refinance the 43-story tower, the Boston Business Journal reported. One Congress Street is one of a trio of properties that comprise the Bulfinch Crossing development, though only two of those properties are built.
Wells Fargo and Bank of America led the lending group for the refinancing. They were likely attracted to a property that opened only two years ago and doesn’t sport any vacant space within its 1 million square feet, which includes a 15,000-square-foot rooftop terrace and a 7,000-square-foot fitness center.
Software company InterSystems is the largest tenant, occupying 420,000 square feet. Other tenants include the law firms K&L Gates and Hush Blackwell, as well as investment company Trillium Asset Management.
State Street also uses the building as its headquarters. The decision of the financial services company to abandon 750,000 square feet at Fortis Property Group’s One Lincoln Street — which was the anchor tenant and had its name on the building — helped push One Lincoln towards foreclosure.
The lending group — an affiliate of the merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners — made the sole bid at $400 million for the 1.1 million-square-foot, 36-story property, according to NBC Boston.
The occupancy at One Congress Street makes the building an outlier in the broader Boston office market.
The availability rate for direct space in the market ticked up again in the first quarter, rising to 18.9 percent, according to a quarterly report from Avison Young. Tenants leased 1.73 million square feet during the first three months of the year, a decline from the fourth quarter.
The average asking rent per square foot, meanwhile, was $52.12 per square foot in the first quarter. The average asking rent in the market has held steady between $50 and $55 per square foot for the better part of a decade.