Above: EMC finally sold one of its office buildings last week. (image from Town GIS maps)
One of EMC’s properties in Southborough was purchased last week for $26.1 million. The 145,000-square-foot* office building on a 19.76 acre parcel at 32 Coslin Drive was purchased by Atlantic Management Corp.
According to Select Board Chair Kathy Cook, the property contains an antennae used by the public safety departments for their communications system.
At the December 3rd Select Board meeting, Cook updated that the sale closed earlier that day and the new owners had already reached out to let the Town know they are “excited” and looking forward to working with them.
An article by the Worcester Business Journal that covered the property sale highlights “Atlantic Management has previously been a part of Central Massachusetts projects seeking to redevelop former corporate campuses into mixed-use developments, leading efforts to redevelop the former Hewlett-Packard campus in Marlborough in the early 2010s.”
However, the management company’s website shows that their portfolio also includes several commercial/industrial properties in the area, including office buildings and warehouse/distribution centers, like the Otis Street properties on in Westborough. One of those is the over 400,000 sqft R&D and industrial building that was renovated and expanded in 2021 for Amazon Robotics.
The purchase price is over 1½ times the value the Town has appraised the property at for tax purposes. According to the Assessor’s website, it is one of the two most valuable EMC properties in town.
I checked the registry of deeds, and it looks like EMC has yet to sell the remaining 253 acres that they own in Southborough. That includes 21 Coslin Drive a 17.8 acre lot with 507,122 sq ft of finished space. (The image right, edited from the Town’s GIS maps, shows all of the EMC properties, plus 32 Coslin highlighted in red.)
32 Coslin and the EMC parcels are located in the Industrial Park zone. Last year, Town officials discussed the possibility of adding zoning for multi-family housing to some of EMC’s properties to meet the state requirements for MBTA Communities. That purportedly sparked interest from developers in the properties. But, ultimately, officials decided against pursuing that route, worrying it would lead to too much rapid housing development, overburdening the schools and other Town resources.
More recently, officials have discussed revising the Industrial Park zoning bylaws to better attract businesses. The Planning Board hopes to bring an Article to Annual Town Meeting in April that modernizes the allowed commercial/industrial uses and makes the permitting process friendlier.
*The sq ft of the office building is from Worcester Business Journal’s article. (The Town assessor lists the finished area as larger, 193,680 sq feet.)
