The New England SIOR Chapter commenced the year with its popular Featured Landlord Breakfast on Wednesday, January 16th at the Newton Marriott. Approximately 35 attendees joined to hear Cummings Properties discuss the issues that they see in the northwest and north section of the Boston industrial market. Cummings Properties is one of the largest commercial property owners in Woburn.
Dennis Clarke, president/CEO from Cummings gave an overview of the company with the following statistics:
* The company has 9 million s/f of properties, mostly in the Boston northern suburbs. It has been in business for 39 years.
* Bill Cummings graduated from Tufts and bought his first building in 1969. The company now has 76 buildings with 1,600 leasing clients and 400 employees.
* Bill started by buying a juice company and then bought an industrial building for the company. He sold the company for $1 million and then sold the building and started to buy other commercial buildings in the Medford area where he grew up.
* Cummings Properties was ranked #19 by Buildings Magazine as one of the top 25 national owners and as the most "unique" owners since the company is not big.
* Cummings never does budgets which is unique because budgets are based on assumptions that never pan out. The company does not have outside financing; they use their own money and this allows for entrepreneur freedom.
* The company's niche is small firms and they have a lot of diverse-sized space. Cummings has a diverse client base which compensates for the lack of geographical diversity of the company
* Cummings has over 100 life science companies occupying over one million s/f.
Dennis went on to describe Cumming's newest project which is a 800,000 s/f office complex in Woburn. The court house has leased a building leaving 400,000 s/f to be developed on spec. The overall occupancy for Cummings is also interesting as follows:
1. Woburn: 95.7%
2. Overall 90.3%
3. Woburn has 3 million total s/f
4. Beverly has 2 million total s/f
Steve Drohosky and Derrick Cooke gave overviews of the Beverly and Woburn market specific. Drohosky is the general manager of the Beverly's Cummings Center and stated the following:
* Beverly has the most vacancy in the portfolio with 2.3 million s/f total in 6 buildings on 80 acres.
* The project was purchased in 1996 and is a 100 year manufacturing facility of 1.4 million s/f that was built from 1902-05. It was the original United Shoe Manufacturing Co. that made machines that made shoes. At one time the building was the largest reinforced concrete structure in the world. When purchased it was 90% vacant and now has been renovated into office, medical and retail space.
Cooke reviewed the Trade Center 128 Woburn office complex. The Trade Center will be ready for occupancy June 2008 for any general office use and is LEED Gold Pre-Certified. There is 440,000 s/f total space with a 900 parking garage.
We would like to thank Jim Boudrot and Ned Leeming, program co-chairs, for organizing this event.