Two of Worcester’s tallest skyscrapers sell in October
Photo | Grant Welker
The Worcester Plaza was purchased by a Boston firm looking for tax breaks.
Photo | Grant Welker
The Sky Mark Tower was bought by a Los Angeles graduate of WPI.
Worcester Plaza, a 24-story glass office tower in downtown Worcester, sold for $16.5 million, just a few weeks after the sale of the tallest residential building in the city was announced.
The Worcester Plaza purchase by Synergy Investments, a Boston commercial real estate firm, puts the value of the tower at $59 per square foot.
Synergy Investments says it has 4 million square feet of space in its portfolio, primarily across the Boston area.
Worcester Plaza is its first Worcester property, its tallest building and its first in an Opportunity Zone, a federal tax program incentivizing new investment in lower-income neighborhoods.
Synergy says on its website it is focused on Opportunity Zone potential in the Boston and Worcester areas.
Worcester Plaza is one of the two tallest commercial buildings in Worcester. The Mercantile Center at 100 Front St. is 20 stories and was purchased by in 2015 for for $33 million Wellesley developer Chip Norton, who invested an additional $36 million in upgrades.
Worcester Plaza was last bought in 2000 for $21.5 million by S-BNK Worcester Main LLC, an entity registered to the Casey Brothers Trust of Boston. It was last assessed at $25.1 million.
Skyscrapers selling
The Worcester Plaza tower, whose sale closed Oct. 10, is the second major property in downtown Worcester to change owners in a matter of weeks.
Sky Mark Tower, an apartment tower that is also 24 stories, sold for $28.8 million in a transaction announced Oct. 1 by Capstone Apartment Partners, the Charlotte firm brokering the deal. The deal comes out to $139,806 for each of the building's 206 apartments. The building, at Main and Austin streets at the southern edge of downtown, is 95% occupied and 98% leased, Capstone Apartment Partners said.
The tower was bought by Los Angeles-based Benedict Canyon Equities. The building had been owned since 2003 by a limited liability corporation registered to Framingham property management company VTT Management.
The founder of Benedict Canyon Equities, Bob Hart, is a 1979 Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduate and a member of its board of trustees. Hart is the president and CEO of TruAmerica Multifamily, a Los Angeles real estate investment firm.
The Sky Mark Tower, which was built in 1990, was last assessed by the city at $18.5 million.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly said The Mercantile Center is 24-stories tall. The building is 20 stories.
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