Mill Creek Residential secured construction financing for a housing project in Medford.

A rendering of Mill Creek Residential’s 4000 Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford.

The Boca Raton, Florida-based multifamily developer closed on a $98M construction loan, the Banker & Tradesman reported. The loan comes after the company acquired the Medford industrial site Sept. 4 for $20.5M.

The site at 4000 Mystic Valley Parkway is approved for a 380-unit apartment complex. The company secured the loan from Charlotte, North Carolina-based Truist Bank.

The project includes two buildings containing 350 units and 2K SF of ground-floor retail. The complex will set aside 88 units as income-restricted.

Mill Creek has developed over 4,000 apartments across 15 projects in Massachusetts. 

This summer, the company filed plans for a 321-unit apartment complex at 42 Beale St. in Quincy’s Wollaston neighborhood. In April, the company broke ground on a 172-unit apartment complex at 751 Boston Post Road in Weston.

SALES

Massachusetts sold five vacant parcels at an auction for a total of $2.9M, the Boston Business Journal reported. The properties are located in Westborough, Northborough, Templeton and Phillipston and total 25 acres. 

The state is now seeking bids for properties in Bedford, Bridgewater, Fitchburg and Lowell. The Healey administration said in June it identified 450 acres of state-owned land that could be developed with up to 3,500 housing units.

LEASES

Security and defense manufacturing company Qinetiq signed a 49K SF lease at an office and industrial property at 358 2nd Ave. in Waltham. R.W. Holmes’ Arthur Amadei represented the landlord, Hillside Associates, and the tenant was represented by Colliers’ Adam Schindler and Jason Rexinis.

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Medical equipment company XRHealth signed a 4K SF office lease at 300 First Ave. in Needham. Freudenheim Partners’ Ellie Cullinan represented the tenant, and Commonwealth Commercial Advisors’ Tim Coyle represented the landlord in the transaction. The property is located in Needham Crossing and is adjacent to I-95.

PERSONNEL

Patrick Shields has joined JLL’s Boston Capital Markets team as a managing director. Shields will relocate from the company’s Chicago office. In this new role, he will run the capital markets team alongside Scott Carpenter. Shields has 15 years of experience in real estate and finance. He joined JLL in 2019. 

CONSTRUCTION & DEVELOPMENT

A rendering of Burbank Terrace in the Fenway.

The Fenway Community Development Corp. celebrated the opening of its Burbank Terrace project, a 100% affordable rental property in Boston. The project brings 27 affordable housing units to the site of a former surface parking lot at 72 Burbank St. in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood. The residential project is the first the nonprofit has completed in 20 years.

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A 234-unit affordable housing project was proposed in Newtonville under the state’s 40B housing law, the Banker & Tradesman reported. Atlanta-based Wood Partners proposed the project and estimates it will require a $73M construction loan and $60M in equity.

This series goes deep with some of the most compelling figures in commercial real estate: the dealmakers, the game-changers, the city-shapers and the larger-than-life personalities who keep CRE interesting.

The Fallon Co.’s Fan Pier project in Boston’s Seaport District is near and dear to President Brian Awe’s heart. After all, he’s been working with the company for about as long as the $4B transformational project has been cooking.

Courtesy of Brian Awe

The Fallon Co. President Brian Awe enjoys climbing in his spare time.

“It’s all about being responsive to what the needs of the particular city are,” said Boston-based Awe, who is also passionate about the company’s East Bank project in Nashville, a key part of revitalizing the area around the Tennessee Titans’ new domed stadium that is slated to open in 2027.

The 40-year-old developer has overseen upward of $6B in projects aimed at remaking cities since joining the company.

Awe began his career as a lawyer at DLA Piper, a global firm with a strong real estate focus, and one of his first clients was The Fallon Co. After working closely with the company over the next 10-plus years, when the chance arose to jump aboard, Awe said it was an opportunity “that was too good to pass up.”

The Fallon Co. focuses on markets like Boston, Nashville, and Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina, with the idea that serving the needs of cities, residents and businesses is essential to making development projects the best they can be, he said. 

Awe spoke with Bisnow about upcoming projects, capital markets and the future of American urban cores. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Bisnow: How did you get into commercial real estate, and what’s kept you there?

Awe: It started, really, with my interest during law school. I took a variety of property and real estate-related classes. So I really was looking to try to figure out how to fit that into my legal career [and] ended up summering at a law firm in town that had a really strong real estate program.

I ended up working with the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District and got to work with a fantastic group of local business leaders, real estate leaders, developers, owners, neighborhood folks to really put together this new thing that really served an important need to revitalize downtown Boston. That was quite real estate-focused, as you might imagine, and really reinforced that desire to work in real estate. I worked at that same law firm, DLA Piper, for my entire career up until about two-and-a-half years ago. 

Bisnow: What has the transition been like going from working with The Fallon Co. as a lawyer to now being its president?

Awe: It’s been really great, maybe in large part because of my familiarity with the team and the team’s familiarity with me. While I was the outside counsel, I really got to know everyone very well, know the business and understand the business pretty well — at least as well as you can in an outside counsel role.

So when I came in, I feel like I had a pretty good foundation in what the company had going, the projects [and] the value that we were bringing to the communities where we’re doing our work. The transition has been great. We’ve continued the strong growth trajectory that Joe Fallon, our chairman and our founder, and Mike Fallon, our CEO, established and really grown on that platform regionally as well as in Boston over those few years.

Bisnow: What’s the market been like lately? Have things been rocky or have you been faring well?

Awe: It’s been a mixed bag. Obviously, the broader economic environment has been really difficult. Covid [was] quite difficult for a variety of reasons, including on a real estate front, particularly as it affects office. [The] life science industry has been hit quite a bit. [It] won’t be a surprise to anyone, but Boston, being one of those key life science markets, has had it a little tougher. We’ve really been able to choose our spots pretty well and pursue projects that have been really productive for us.

In an environment where it’s difficult to finance, we were able to actually close a construction financing on our last building at our Fan Pier project. That’s a project The Fallon Co., along with our partner [Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.], purchased in 2005. That’s been really gratifying to see that project through most of its history.

The quality of the projects we have going really is a testament to the company, and a silver lining for us is being able to move those projects forward in an otherwise fairly difficult environment. 

Courtesy of Otillo Swimrun

Awe competes in swimruns and ultramarathons.

Bisnow: What are the latest projects you’re working on that you’re most excited about?

Awe: I’m really excited about our project in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s a market we went into back in 2018-2019, looking for the right project to implement large mixed-use development. That’s really what we specialize in, and we have a project there that’s called the East Bank of Nashville. It’s where the existing Tennessee Titans football stadium is, and they’re in the process of building a new stadium right next to where their existing stadium is, but there’s a lot of land right around the stadium that is either there currently or will be made available once the old stadium comes down.

We applied for [it] in 2023, and were awarded the master development rights to 30 acres. That’s something we’re really, really excited about. We love Nashville. We think it has great things going for it and is a place a lot of people want to be. This is a pretty unique piece of property, like Fan Pier was 20 years ago. It’s got all the amenities and other things located right nearby, but it’s an opportunity to create a new neighborhood, and that’s really what we’re focused on doing in Nashville. Now, we’re deep into design and trying to get that project started, starting with an affordable housing building as well as another commercial building.

Bisnow: Do you have a vision for where American cities are going? I know downtown office space generally isn’t doing well across the country. Can big urban projects combat that and bring it back? 

Awe: I think so. It’s all about being responsive to what the needs of the particular city are. It’s one of those where it gets a little difficult to generalize, saying what’s going to work really well for Boston is going to work well for Phoenix is going to work well for Seattle. Each one of them has such different dynamics.

But the idea of investing in downtowns and really creating something where people want to be, where they want to live, where they want to work, those are really laudable goals and something we try to bring into all of our developments.

We believe strongly in urban cores. We think that the advantages are really strong. There’s lots of things to think about affordable housing, transportation, traffic, all of those sorts of things. But a thoughtfully-designed city with thoughtfully-designed projects really has that potential to help with either revitalization or emphasis on urban cores, depending on the particular city.

Bisnow: What are the ingredients needed for a project to be something you’re excited about?

Awe: The opportunity to spend a lot of time in a city, so multiphased projects, mixed uses that really complement one another. And the opportunity to engage with stakeholders, whether it’s elected officials, residents, businesses, other community organizations, [and] really understanding what is important to all those folks. Often, the same thing is not important to different stakeholder groups. [We’re] really trying to treat that as a bit of a challenge and understand those different perspectives, and how do we try to bring all those perspectives together into something that we and the city and all of those stakeholder groups could be proud of?

Bisnow: Tell me about a project that you worked on that meant a lot to you. What did you learn from it and why was it important?

Awe: The Fan Pier project here in Boston is really important to me. It was the first project I worked on as a lawyer, and we just closed the financing and started construction on the final phase. It’s been really great just to see the life cycle of a large, mixed-use project like that over the course of a decade-plus and just getting to realize the vision that folks had years and years ago. Also trying to adapt it to ongoing issues that arise — electrification of buildings, EV spaces, climate change, resiliency — all of those different features that perhaps folks just didn’t think as much about 20-25 years ago when the project was being permitted but are critical needs now. Figuring out how to make accommodations and adaptations for those different factors has been really exciting, and it’s really fantastic to see this project come to completion right as we start another project that’s similar in a lot of ways in Nashville. 

Courtesy of Brian Awe

Brian Awe with his wife, Meghan

Bisnow: What does the future hold for The Fallon Co.?

Awe: The future is projects a lot like the East Bank, hopefully on the same scale but in the markets where we really like to focus. We do see life science coming back in key markets. Demand is about where it was in Boston in 2019 — there’s still a lot of capacity, but I think the really well-located projects will be ones that will be quite successful. We have a couple in Boston right now that are either just permitted or are nearing the end of permitting that we’re really excited to move forward as the market continues to improve.

Then, really continuing our projects in Charlotte and Nashville and Raleigh as well, continuing to increase the presence there.

Bisnow: Is there a white whale project that you’d love to tackle someday? 

Awe: I think we have it. The East Bank project now is really that hugely complicated, but therefore hugely satisfying, project that we’re spending quite a bit of time on. [We’re] thinking really hard about how to make that Nashville’s newest neighborhood, which is really something that’s quite exciting to say. Starting now, we’re really underway on that, but continuing for a number of years until we’re able to fully build out that same space.

Bisnow: Give us a bold prediction for the rest of the year.  

Awe: We’re going to see a lot more movement in the real estate equity markets. There’s been a lot of folks that, I believe, have been sitting on a lot of capacity and waiting for the uncertainty in the world to settle down a little bit. Market uncertainty, interest rate uncertainty, presidential election uncertainty. As some of those start to come into a bit more clarity, I think the equity players on the market will start to make some more investments, and that’ll be good all the way around for the real estate community.

Bisnow: What is your weekend routine or favorite weekend activity? 

Awe: Weekends alway end up with a long run or a long swim in some way. I like to dabble in ultramarathons … so I always end up waking up early [and] getting the exercise done. Then I spend a lot of time with my wife and my two daughters, just getting out and around Boston and New England. There’s so much to do here, and my daughters are at a really fun age for that.

Local, state and federal officials convened with executives representing union labor and the construction industry at WS Development’s One Boston Wharf in Boston’s Seaport, to unveil the first sidewalk made with Sublime Systems’ low-carbon Sublime Cement, following an earlier integration in the building’s interior concrete lobby. 

In a transaction announced in 2021, Amazon has leased the entirety of the office space within One Boston Wharf, creating a total footprint of more than one million square feet within WS Development’s 33-acre Boston Seaport development. One Boston Wharf reportedly is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90% below code requirements and eliminating 5.1 million pounds of CO2 emissions annually. 

“We all want to be in this beautiful building, and we all want to be in a future that is just and that is clean and that is sustainable,” said Sublime Systems CEO and co-founder Dr. Leah Ellis. “This commercial project here in Seaport has been essential in driving the volume and demand that will bring us to market.” 

The Boston Planning and Development Agency’s board has approved Boston University’s real estate plan for its Charles River campus through 2026, reported the Boston Business Journal. The plan includes major renovations to Warren Towers and Mugar Memorial Library and a new school of global studies.

The changes to Warren Towers, BU’s signature dormitories, include improved bathrooms and HVAC systems and repairs to the building envelope. The board also okayed a large lab complex on Wentworth Institute of Technology property a month after tabling the proposal, along with two office-to-housing conversions and Jones Street Investment Partners’ 236-unit apartment building behind the convention center in South Boston.  

The BU approval is for the school’s institutional master plan, the Business Journal reported. The plans typically cover 10 years, but the university sought a stopgap version in order to give new BU President Mellisa Gilliam time to help determine her vision for the campus.

Eli Lilly and Company has opened the Lilly Seaport Innovation Center (LSC), a research and development facility in the Boston Seaport that occupies 346,000 square feet in a 12-story property developed and operated by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. The space will include the first East Coast location of Lilly Gateway Labs (LGL), to which Tevard Biosciences will relocate its corporate headquarters.

“The opening of LSC expands upon Lilly’s longstanding presence in the Boston area,” said Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer and president, Lilly Research Laboratories and president, Lilly Immunology. “We are committed to being supportive neighbors in this hub of discovery and innovation, further collaborating with leading institutions and new talent to continue delivering transformative medicines for the people who need them most.” 

Cambridge, MA-based Tevard said Tuesday that it was selected to join the LGL community based on its tRNA platform technologies and promising programs for neurological disorders, cardiology, and muscular dystrophies.

Wentworth Institute of Technology plans to expand its Boston campus with approximately 1,400 new dorm beds and new academic buildings over the next decade, Boston Business Journal reported. 

The plans include two new dorms on Huntington Avenue, replacing Edwards and Rodgers Hall with a 672-bed residence hall, and replacing Baker Hall with a 13-story, 522-bed residence hall. Another eight-story, 217-bed residence hall will be built with a new athletics field house.  

Wentworth also plans a new academic building for the School of Architecture and Design and new buildings for the engineering and management schools at the Annex complex. Renovations to Wentworth Hall will include a new welcome center and a new athletics field house, along with new green spaces and outdoor public areas. Construction could begin next year pending approval from the Boston Planning and Development Agency.