| Cross Point | |
|---|---|
 | |
 | |
| General information | |
| Status | Completed |
| Type | Class A office building |
| Location | Lowell, Massachusetts, US |
| Address | 900 Chelmsford Street Lowell, Massachusetts 01851 |
| Coordinates | 42°36′53″N71°19′29″W / 42.61472°N 71.32472°W |
| Owner | Yale Properties USA Divco West Public Sector Pension Investment Board (Canada) |
| Height | 168.93 feet (51.49 m) [1] |
Cross Point is an office complex in Lowell, Massachusetts. Formerly named Wang Towers, it is a local landmark, dominating the busy intersection [2] [3] of Interstate 495 (the Boston outer ring road) and U.S. Route 3. It is the third-tallest building in Lowell, after Three River Place and the Kenneth R. Fox Student Union at UMass Lowell.
Contents
The complex, consisting of three interconnected cement-clad 12-story [4] [Note 1] towers and other buildings totaling over 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2) situated on 15 acres (6.1 ha), was built by original sole tenant Wang Laboratories as its new world headquarters. [3]
Construction began in 1980, and it was completed in stages at a cost of US$ 60,000,000 (about $195 million [5] in current dollars). [6] [Note 2] The buildings served as a demonstration of the rise of Wang Labs and the Boston-area computer technology industry generally, and later as a sign of the rapid fall of the company and industry:[ original research? ] Wang Labs entered bankruptcy in 1992, and the property was sold at bankruptcy auction in 1994 for a tiny fraction of its construction cost – $525,000 (about $1.11 million [5] in current dollars) – in 1994, to Louis Pellegrine, [6] fronting for One Industrial Avenue Corp (OIAC). OIAC was a partnership of principals Christopher Kelly and Luis Alvarado, along with Brian Kelly, Daniel Doherty and investor Geometry Partners. [7]
OIAC renovated the towers (with the help of tax breaks and a $2.2 million letter of credit from the City of Lowell) [8] [9] and sold them in 1998 to San Francisco–based Yale Properties USA and Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, reportedly for over $100 million. [7] The towers acquired new tenants, but business was hurt by the 2000–2001 bursting of the "dot-com bubble", and it was described as being, by 2005, a "ghost town" [10] with an occupancy rate of about 50%. [10]
Yale Properties bought out Blackstone's share in 2005; in the same year San Diego–based Divco West Properties bought an interest in the property. [11] By 2007 the occupancy rate was back up to about 90%, with major tenants such as Motorola moving in. [10] Yale actively shopped the property, but a 2007 deal to sell it for about $180 million to a consortium led by Davis Marcus Partners [12] fell through. The real estate crash beginning in 2007 put severe strain on the property's finances, [13] but Yale and Divco West (along with Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board) retained ownership. In 2012 the towers were about 70% filled [14] and Colliers International was hired to boost occupancy. [14]
The towers were sold to CP Associates LLC for $100 million in 2014. [15] [3]
One of the largest office lease relocation transactions in Greater Boston happened when Kronos Incorporated signed a 500,000 square-foot global headquarters office lease at Cross Point in 2016. [16] [17] This move makes it one of the largest employers in Lowell and the largest tenant at Cross Point with 1,500 employees on a total of 16 floors. [18] [19] CrossPoint’s ownership team and Kronos (renamed UKG after a 2020 merger) planned to spend more than $40 million on the design and build of a completely modernized facility. [19]
