Located along Routes 128, 93 and 1 with direct access to the interchanges of Route 95 and 16, the North market offers a suburban setting proximate to the thriving Boston and Cambridge economies. Once a primarily industrial region, the North now has a more diverse cluster of service and technology companies as well. Additionally, Boston’s North suburbs allow area businesses to benefit from Greater Boston’s and well as Southern New Hampshire’s diverse and highly educated labor pools. The North market consists of the following towns: Beverly, Danvers, Everett, Lynnfield, Malden, Medford, North Reading, Peabody, Reading, Saugus, Somerville, Stoneham, Wakefield, Wilmington, Winchester, and Woburn
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The North office market recorded 72,727 square feet of negative net absorption in the second quarter, bringing the year-to-date total to 22,898 square feet. The decline in absorption this quarter is mostly due to the arrival of two large blocks of space for future occupancy at 350 Main Street in Malden, where the Massachusetts Department of Education is vacating 85,800 square feet; and 200 Ballardvale Street in Wilmington, as AGFA downsizes from 126,258 square feet to 30,000 square feet. The addition of these spaces and approximately 40,000 square feet of sublease space from three smaller tenants pushed the availability rate up to 20.5%, an increase of 1.5 percentage points from one year ago.
Despite the negative absorption the vacancy rate continues to decline and at 12.9% is 3.6 percentage points less than one year ago. The decline can be attributed to small and mid sized tenants dominating leasing activity in the North market this quarter and chipping away at blocks of vacant space. These small and mid sized tenants cannot completely offset diminishing demand from large tenants however.
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LEASE
Paychex
100 RiverPark Drive,
61,200 SF
Relocation
Nizhoni Health Systems
5 Middlesex Avenue, Somerville
15,800 SF
Relocation
North Shore Medical
100 Cummings Center, Beverly 15,000 SF
Relocation
SALE
97 Andover Street, Danvers January 2008
$8,107,720 ($184/SF)
44,000 SF
55 Ferncroft, Danvers
May 2008
$12,350,000 ($120/SF) 103,272 SF
8 Presidential Way, Woburn July 2007
$11,650,000 ($70/SF)
166,000 SF
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