Normandy, Five Mile secure Bain at John Hancock Tower

The Joint owners of New England’s tallest tower have lured private investment firm Bain Capital to take up to 270,000 square feet of office space on a 15-year lease. The letting brings the occupancy rate of the 1.8m square foot Boston skyscraper to about 95%.

Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile Capital Partners, the joint owners of Boston skyscraper John Hancock Tower, have agreed a large letting to private investment firm Bain Capital.

According to an announcement by the firms, Bain will take 270,000 square feet of space at the 62-storey, 1.8 million square foot tower, bringing the occupancy rate of the building to about 95 percent. Bain will move into the building at 200 Clarendon Street in Boston’s Back Bay District in the autumn of 2011.

Normandy and Five Mile purchased the tower via an auction in April last year. The deal saw the partners pay $20.1 million in equity and assume the tower’s $640.5 million mortgage. It was marketed for sale after previous owner Broadway Partners defaulted on its debt obligation on the building. Broadway originally paid $1.3 billion for the building alongside two others in 2006.

The partners managed to be involved in the action process after purchasing mezzanine debt positions in the asset from a year earlier. Despite a bid from the parent company of the tower’s special servicer Green Loan Services, Normandy and Five Mile managed to emerge victorious, leading to them winning PERE’s North America deal of the year award in 2009.

The letting to Bain will come as positive news to the partners as it will help to diminish the risk of taking control of the asset.

Northeast and Mid-Atlantic focused Normandy Real Estate Partners manages a total of $1 billion in equity commitments across its real estate funds series while Five Mile Capital Partners currently manages approximately $2 billion of assets.