Meditech Expands MetroWest Presence
COURTESY
Westwood-based Meditech has purchased this 208,850-square-foot office building in Foxborough for $9.9 million.
Medical Information Technology Inc. has been a major presence in Framingham since 1995 and now, it plans to expand its MetroWest footprint with a Foxborough campus.
The company, more commonly known as Meditech, will bring 500 jobs to Foxborough, where it has purchased a vacant, 208,850-square-foot building that formerly housed One Beacon Insurance.
A Second MetroWest Campus
New offices and a planned conference center in Foxborough add to Westwood-based Meditech's existing 450,000-square-foot building in Framingham, where it employs approximately 800 people.
The company, which makes electronic medical record computer systems for hospitals and other providers, also has locations in a number of eastern Massachusetts communities, including Canton, Norwood and Fall River, as well as one in Atlanta, Ga.
Paul Berthiaume, Meditech's senior manager of corporate communications, said Meditech has many employees in the Foxborough area, and they will likely be among the first to start working at the new campus in 2013.
Meditech purchased the four-story office building at 1 Constitution Way for $9.9 million, according to the registry of deeds.
The company is planning significant renovations to the building, which it plans to use as offices and a conference center for its customer events, Berthiaume said.
"You could probably get a few thousand [employees] in there," Berthiaume said. "We're going to put 500 in and make it an event center."
The company expects to have between 200 and 300 employees in the space by 2013 and the rest by 2014, he said.
Meditech purchased the building from Hub Properties Trust, which paid $30.1 million for it in 2003, according to records.
Growing Customer Gatherings
More than 2,000 hospitals and medical facilities use Meditech systems, Berthiaume said, and that has driven larger numbers of doctors, nurses and chief information officers to Meditech training and product-information seminars and conferences.
A 250-seat auditorium in Canton has worked well in the past, but lately, Meditech has been using area hotels in Massachusetts and other parts of the country for those events.
"We've outgrown it," Berthiaume said.
He wouldn't offer much information on what renovations are planned or what they might cost.
"It's going to be significantly different; that's really the biggest thing I can say," he said.
Real Estate Impact
Meditech's Sept. 25 property purchase helped buoy the relatively small southern Interstate 495 office market in the third quarter, which saw a positive net absorption of nearly 200,000 square feet during the quarter, according to commercial real estate firm CB Richard Ellis.
It was a positive sign for a market that is struggling with high vacancy rates.
But even with a net absorption of about 200,000 square feet, the southern 495 market still has 22-percent vacancy, lower than only 495/Mass Pike West, which is centered on the intersection of I-495 and the Mass Pike, and northeastern 495, which contains Lowell, Andover and others.
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