A joint venture between a New York developer and a Los Angeles biotech venture-capital firm last week paid Gillette $80 million for a 2.4-acre parcel at A and Binford streets that Gillette now uses mainly for parking.
The parcel, which runs from A Street along the southern side of Binford to Fort Point Channel, is across Binford from the parking lot where the Channel nightclub used to be, before it was torn down for construction of the tunnels that connect the former end of the Massachusetts Turnpike to the Ted Williams Tunnel. The tunnels also run under the parcel that Breakthrough Properties, a joint venture of Tishman Speyer of New York and Bellco Capital of Los Angeles, bought from Gillette last week.
Tishman Speyer is best known for its holdings in New York, but also owns One Channel Center, just down A Street, as well as 125 High St. downtown and part of the Pier 4 development in the Seaport.
Bellco was founded by two doctors, Arie and Rebecka Belldegrun; their son, Dan, is CEO of Breakthrough Properties, which has an office at 125 High St., and which describes itself as
A first-of-its-kind collaboration in real estate development, which came together through a shared passion that combines Tishman Speyer’s global real estate platform with Bellco Capital’s industry-making biotechnology entrepreneurship to capitalize on the rapidly expanding - yet substantially under-supplied - life science real estate industry.
In a 27-page agreement attached to the deed, Breakthrough agreed to grant the city of Boston an easement for building a berm along Fort Point Channel. The city has made such a berm a key part of its climate-change planning, to prevent rising seas and fiercer storms from reclaiming South Bay, which used to be an actual bay, by way of Fort Point Channel.
The agreement also lists things Breakthrough cannot put on the site, including carnivals, palm readers, tobacco shops, gun ranges, porno shops, prisons, drive-through restaurants, massage parlors, houses of worship, food pantries, tattoo parlors and funeral homes.
