Bloomberg — New York-based developer Tishman Speyer has secured a $750 million construction financing package, led by Otera Capital, for the first phase of a sprawling Harvard University research campus.
The first part of the Harvard Enterprise Research Campus project is a 900,000-square-foot (83,600-square-meter) mixed-used development that will include two laboratory buildings for scientific research, a 343-unit rental apartment building and a hotel, Tishman said Friday in a statement. A quarter of the new rental units included in the project’s first phase will be affordable.
The deal is the largest construction financing reported in the US so far this year, Tishman said. Lenders have pulled back on providing new commercial-property debt in the past year, as concerns mount about the state of commercial real estate.
Construction will start next week, with buildings set to open in late 2025 and early 2026. In 2019, Tishman was selected by the Harvard Allston Land Co. as the developer for the first phase of the project, which will be located next to the Harvard Business School and Harvard Science and Engineering Complex in the Allston neighborhood of Boston.
Breakthrough Properties, a joint venture between Tishman and Bellco Capital, will build and operate the labs. There will also be a mass-timber building developed to serve as a conference facility for the university. Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. was the broker for the financing.
More than 150 Black and Latino individuals and households invested in the project. The group — which includes Rudy Cline-Thomas, founder of investment firm Mastry, and athletes including the NBA’s Andre Drummond and Kyle Lowry — contributed more than $30 million of the equity investment.
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