Methuen, MA According to Avison Young, Polartec’s former world headquarters and primary manufacturing facility, located at 46 Stafford St., are being marketed for sale. Totaling 560,000 s/f, 46 Stafford St. consists of two buildings: a two-story, 495,000 s/f building known as the Polartec Building, and another attached single-story, 65,000 s/f structure referred to as Fin II.

46 Stafford Street - Methuen, MA

Avison Young principals Scott Jamieson and Michael Smith, along with senior vice president Michael Buckley, vice-president Brandon Dickason and senior financial analyst Derek Opert, who are all based in the firm’s Boston office, are marketing the building for sale on behalf of owner Versa Capital Management, LLC. In addition, Avison Young principal Keith Gurtler, along with senior vice-presidents Michael McCarthy and Tom Aitken, also based in the firm’s Boston office, will co-ordinate the leasing for the property.

The buildings will be ready for occupancy in early 2017.

“Avison Young is honored to receive the sales listing and leasing assignments for the Polartec and Fin II buildings,” said Jamieson. “The site has an interesting history, and we’re looking forward to finding a new owner and tenants who will have more intriguing stories to tell in the future.”

46 Stafford Street - Methuen, MA

The Polartec building is one of the newest class A manufacturing buildings in the greater Methuen market. In late 1995, a widely publicized explosion sparked a fire that destroyed much of the manufacturing complex that formerly housed Malden Mills. The company’s owner and CEO Aaron Feuerstein famously paid all 3,000 employees their regular salaries and continued to provide health benefits while the state-of-the-art manufacturing facility was being reconstructed.

Malden Mills later became Polartec (now a subsidiary of Versa Capital), which has invested in various renovations and upgrades since the post-fire buildings’ completion in 1996. The renovations and upgrades include a Bahnson air-wash system to clean, condition and humidify air, a 3-million-gallon-per-day water treatment system with a 210,000-gallon storage tank, an exterior 100,000-gallon, above-ground oil tank, and a Munck Autech automated storage/retrieval  system (AS/RS).

“This significant infrastructure can be attractive to a wide variety of new industries that could locate here and benefit from a deep labor pool nearby,” said Smith.

Located just off of Rte. 28, the 46 Stafford St. site provides convenient access to I-93 and I-495.

Smith said, “Proximity to these two major highways is ideal for manufacturing and distribution facilities, as I-93 and I-495 intersect several major roadways and provide tremendous access to the whole of New England The accessibility to these major roadways also draws a highly-skilled labor force from both the local, densely-populated Merrimack Valley area, as well as from Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire.”

Avison Young is the world’s fastest-growing commercial real estate services firm. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Avison Young is a collaborative, global firm owned and operated by its principals. Founded in 1978, the company comprises 2,400 real estate professionals in 78 offices, providing value-added, client-centric investment sales, leasing, advisory, management, financing and mortgage placement services to owners and occupiers of office, retail, industrial and multi-family properties.