It didn’t take long to find a buyer for the GTECH Corporate Campus off Interstate 95.
The 51-acre, West Greenwich parcel was on the market for only three months before GTECH Corp. accepted a $43 million offer from real estate developer Condyne LLC, of Quincy, Mass., in a joint venture with Dead River Co., of Bangor, Maine.
“It wasn’t your conventional throw up a sign and sell it,” said Peter C. Hayes, partner and co-founder of Providence-based Hayes & Sherry Real Estate Services in Providence, which brokered the deal for GTECH.
“We had a list of companies we thought would be interested. We went after them. … It was selective.”
Though GTECH received several offers, Condyne and Dead River Co.
offered the best price and the best terms and conditions, Hayes said.
But other factors also contributed to the seemingly easy sale – among them, careful planning by GTECH’s staff, in preparing the property before it went to market.
For a year and a half prior to GTECH’s recent move into its new headquarters in downtown Providence, across from the Providence Place mall, the company worked to develop a master plan for the site that would make it desirable for potential buyers.
For instance, GTECH won approval from the Town of West Greenwich to rezone the site for commercial development, said Bob Vincent, spokesman for GTECH. “We thought it could reasonably handle a number of parcels. … We always anticipated we’d sell the entire parcel or individual parcels.”
GTECH’s team determined that the best way to maximize the site’s value was to prove it could handle 300,000 square feet of additional development. That helped in defending the price they put on the land, Hayes said, which helped in the sales process.
Condyne said it plans to follow through with what the master plan outlines – namely, an additional 362,000 square feet of development.
The plan includes three new office buildings, totaling 255,000 square feet, as well as a 90,000-square-foot hotel and 17,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.
“As we see it, there are truly limited corporate campuses in Rhode Island,” said Meghan Murphy, marketing executive at Condyne. The company was recently named the fifth-largest commercial developer in Massachusetts by Boston Business Journal.
Asked why Condyne chose to develop a corporate campus in Rhode Island, a state where it had never worked before, Murphy said it was because “we see growth – not in just specific sectors such as technology or biotech, but growth in the overall region.” She added, “We project tenants who fill the space to come from … companies located within Rhode Island as well as … companies located outside of the region.”
Hayes said he also sees a need for additional office space in the state.
“If you have a company looking for 50,000 to 100,000 square feet, many times you may have one alternative or none,” said Hayes, who has been retained by Condyne and Dead River to market future developments on the West Greenwich campus. “Many feel the state has missed opportunities because we don’t have the inventory.”
Murphy added that the state’s efforts to attract new businesses also make Condyne’s investment more valuable, as do the area’s transportation network and competitive housing prices. “This market specifically allows people to live, work and shop all in one close area at a reasonable cost of living,” she said.
In addition to developing a master plan to entice buyers, GTECH last spring secured a seven-year lease agreement with tenant Amgen Inc.
Doing so made the property “that much more valuable,” Hayes said, because it ensured a steady cash flow. The lease agreement includes an option to buy.
Amgen will occupy the former GTECH world headquarters, a 93,000-square-foot office building. The biopharmaceutical company already occupies a building next door.
GTECH will lease back the other existing structure on the campus, a 170,000-square-foot building where it will use 110,000 square feet for office space and 60,000 for manufacturing space.
“It was always our intent to maintain manufacturing facilities there,”
Vincent said.
The campus also houses a 14,000-square-foot day care facility, operated by Bright Horizons Children’s Centers Inc., which will remain at the site.
“This business park has tremendous potential, and we look forward to turning it into a premiere executive-style campus,” Condyne President Jeff O’Neill said in a news release. “This acquisition diversifies our portfolio with a mix of qualified assets as well as upside future development in a growing market.”
