The Quad - The Davis Companies

The Quad

10 Wilson Road, Cambridge, MA

Thesis

The surge in demand for life-science space over the past five years has outpaced availability in the highly sought-after East Cambridge, MA, submarket, home to MIT and many large pharmaceutical companies.
With its proximity to East Cambridge and Red Line MBTA access to Harvard and Kendall squares, we identified West Cambridge as a strong overflow lab market that would price at a discount to East Cambridge.
DIV Fund I owned a portfolio of four industrial/R&D buildings in the Fresh Pond area of West Cambridge, rebranded as The Quad, and marketed the portfolio for sale with a plan to convert/develop the buildings for lab use.
Following the marketing process, we elected to recapitalize our ownership of The Quad in a joint venture with Invesco Real Estate. We offered continuing participation to the original DIV Fund I investors through this joint venture.

In 2018, the joint venture acquired The Quad for $73.0 million and subsequently acquired an adjacent site, 109 Smith.
With two of the existing conversion buildings leased and stabilized, the joint venture moved to the next phase of the master plan to pursue approvals for a proposed lab building to be developed on a combined parcel consisting of 75 Smith and 109 Smith.
Working with the city of Cambridge, the project evolved by pushing most of the parking underground, thus allowing the building to grow significantly (by allowing for a greater building footprint on the site) and the rentable area ultimately increased by over 60%.
In August 2020 the Cambridge Planning Board voted unanimously (6-0) to approve the proposed 161,000-square-foot, three-story lab building which is currently under construction.
The next phase of the business plan is to design and seek approvals for a new 310,000-square-foot lab building on the site at 40 Smith Place, currently occupied and used as an R&D facility.

Life Science & High Intellectual Capital Workplaces

Non-Fund/Legacy

Cambridge, MA

540,000 RSF