The Sad Saga Behind Independence Wharf
I don’t know if Independence Wharf is jinxed.
But after reading Paul McMorrow’s excellent story on the troubled waterfront high-rise in the June 22 issue of B&T I certainly have my suspicions.
General Electric Asset Management probably thought it was getting a steal when it scooped up the mostly empty office project (the one with the garish green glass facade) back in 2002 from late Big Dig construction magnate Les Marino.
GE shelled out $82 million to pick up a seemingly promising, though mostly empty, harborside complex with Class A pretensions.
It certainly looked like a steal - Marino had pumped well more than $100 million to buy the old Atlantic Avenue warehouse that had been on the site and convert into what at least he believed would be a highly sought after corporate address.
But now it looks like history is repeating itself again, with industry insiders warning that GE is not likely to get anywhere near the $100 million it is seeking, despite years of hard labor slowly filling the office building with tenants.
Given the depressed market for commercial real estate, GE may very well have to take a haircut and call it day.
Not fun but nothing that is going to wreck the balance sheet.
Marino, though, was not so fortunate.
His Modern Continental riding high as the Big Dig’s largest contractor, Marino bet big on Independence Wharf in hopes of striking it rich in an office market that was humming from the late 1990s boom.
But his big bet backfired badly. (It was a story I covered pretty extensively back in my Boston Herald days.)
Independence Wharf rolled onto the market just as the tech boom fizzled at the start of the decade. The building sat empty for years, its green glass facade a turnoff in Boston’s highly snobby corporate office market.
When Marino sold it in 2002, he lost tens of millions – a serious blow that hastened the unraveling of his Modern Continental construction empire.
Let’s just hope the next owner has better luck.