Optimum Asset Management has completed the sale of 220 Mill Road, an R&D site located in Chelmsford, Mass., a suburb of Boston. The sale sees Thermo Fisher Scientific, the incumbent tenant, take over the site.
Thermo Fisher, a blue-chip biotech giant, is acquiring the asset through its subsidiary Life Technologies Corp. in a deal that generated an IRR of more than 40 percent for Optimum Real Estate Fund – USA II following a one-year hold period.
The property at 220 Mill Road encompasses 85,000 square feet of office, lab and R&D space. Its greater Boston location is at the heart of the U.S. life sciences sector, where growing demand for commercial real estate from pharmaceutical, biotech and medical research companies has resulted in a record low 4 percent lab vacancy rate and the largest lab inventory in the United States.
Optimum’s acquisition of the site in August 2019 saw the firm deliver a capex program to reposition the asset, introducing a hi
