Waterville's iconic Hathaway shirt building sold
CBRE|The Boulos Co.
The Hathaway Creative Center in Wateville has been sold for $20.15 million.
The Hathaway Creative Center — for many years the Hathaway Shirt Co. — sold for $20.15 million.
CBRE | The Boulos Co. said Thursday the property was sold to a holding company, North River Hathaway LLC. It had been on the market since August 2016.
The five-story, 236,000-square-foot mill dates to 1876, when it was a cotton manufacturing and textile operation. Hathaway Shirt occupied the property from 1956 to 2002.
The property, which is at 10 Water St., was acquired in 2006 by Paul Boghossian and his business partner, Tom Niemann, according to the Hathaway Creative Center’s website. They converted the space to Class A office space and 67 modern apartments. The apartments are fully leased.
Commercial tenants include MaineGeneral Health, Cengage Learning and Collaborative Consulting.
The sale coincides with downtown redevelopment being led by Colby College.
The Hathaway building’s buyer, North River Co., is a New York-based commercial real estate development firm. Elsewhere in Maine, it owns Fort Andross Mill in Brunswick and, in Portland, the building that houses the law firm Pierce Atwood and One and Two Portland Square.
This was a great time to sell, said CBRE|The Boulos Co. partner/broker Chris Paszyc.
“As we’ve seen with a variety of investors over the last couple of years, the time to sell is now,” Paszyc told Mainebiz Real Estate Insider reporter Laurie Schreiber. “The market is very good and investors are seeing this is the right time to exit.”
For the buyers, he said, the property is an excellent long-term hold.
“Right now there’s a 15-year lease with Maine General and the apartments are 100% occupied with a waiting list,” he said. “It’s a very stable asset.”
An additional upside is the approximately 30,000 square feet of vacant “warm shell” first-floor space — with installed HVAC and a weather-tight shell — that’s ripe for development, he added.
Since going on the market last August, the property generated tremendous interest, Paszyc said. Initial marketing went out to 8,000 qualified investors across the U.S. Of that, about 2,500 expressed interest. In the end, North River Hathaway emerged as the best party based on the sellers’ parameters which, in addition to meeting the price, also included a demonstrated ability to consummate the transaction, demonstrated experience in dealing with the type of asset as a multi-tenanted, mixed-use property with both residential and commercial components.
The price is a significant milestone, said Paszyc.
“I can’t think, within recent memory, of a property selling for this much money anywhere in central Maine,” he said. “The closest would be $14 million for a medical office property we sold in Augusta a couple of years ago.”
The price is a function of net operating income of the property combined with the nature of the tenants (mixed-use) and the length of term of the leases held by the major tenants, he said.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments