Boston Properties, Inc. (NYSE:BXP) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Alexander Goldfarb from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Alexander Goldfarb: Hey, good morning. Owen or Doug or whoever wants to take it. So I’m going to ask a two-parter, but it’s all related to the same. As you guys think about investment — future investment to grow the company, a multipart, whether your land holdings in Northern Virginia still have any potential for data centers. If there’s any office to resi conversion because of the new laws that may present opportunities to you whether it’s existing assets or to invest in an asset that would be convertible? And three, what do you think it takes for Lexington AV next to Grand Central to finally benefit from what’s going on West of Grand Central to come East of Grand Central?

Owen Thomas: Well, there’s a lot there. You violated Helen’s rule of one question. But that’s okay, Alex. We’ll still answer them. So anyway, I’ll just start. Lexington Avenue is doing well. I mean where we are at 53rd Street, it’s right where the Subway Station is and 601 and is fully leased or very close to it and 599 is well on its way. So and 399 — I mean on Park Avenue, but it’s back end is on the Lex right at the same location and those buildings are performing extremely well. I think that location on Lexington Avenue is also unique because of the access to the subway. So on residential, so I don’t think there’s any — I don’t want to say any assets, but I don’t think there’s going to be a significant opportunity in our portfolio of existing assets to convert them to residential.

I mean frankly, the only ones that are empty or ones that we’ve emptied out for life science conversion and some — they all have some level of leasing. I’m not sure they have the physical characteristics for it. That all being said, we do have land parcels that you see in our supplemental and in several cases, we are working with local communities to rezone that land from commercial to residential. And given some of the regulatory overlay that’s going on in many of our communities and states that process is a little less challenging than it used to be. So I think that’s where we will benefit. And then I do think there may be opportunities, and we’re certainly looking at them for our residential team to get involved in office building conversions of buildings that we don’t currently own.

We’ve always felt that this is going to be an important in commercial real estate, it’s certainly one that’s going to unfold slowly, but you’re seeing it unfold right now, and there’s an increasing number of projects in many of our markets.

Douglas Linde: Yes. And just to put a little bit of meat on the sort of carcass of that on the residential conversion side for us. So it’s 17 Hartwell Avenue. In Lexington, we have a 30,000 square foot office building that we will demolish and that we are getting entitlements to build 350 plus or minus residential units. In Shady Grove, which is a piece of land that we bought hopefully, to have thought about doing some life science. We said we’re going to pivot, and we’re going to do, hopefully, some life science at some point, but we’re going to be residential. And so we’re selling a piece of parcel to a townhome developer, and we’re also working on the residential portion of that development. And then third, we bought some older relatively inexpensive office buildings with an existing parking structure in Herndon, Virginia, and we just received approval to convert that site to multifamily, both townhome and multifamily apartments, and we are likely to sell the townhomes and potentially either sell or develop the residential.

So we are actively doing that. And then jumping to the other side of the country, our assets at North First, which we’ve owned for quite some time, which we had hoped to build up some kind of office on. We are now working with the City of San Jose on converting a portion of that site to a residential entitlement, and we would build some residential and potentially provide a parcel for affordable housing to somebody else who would build that. And then obviously, down in Santa Monica, there’s a real question about what Santa Monica Business Park will become over the next, call it, decade or two. But I — it would not be unlikely to see not just office development there, but to also see other uses, including some kind of residential on that site.

So this is sort of something that we are working actively on as we speak. It’s not about converting an office building in Times Square to residential or an office building in the CBD of Washington, D.C. to residential, or an office building in Back Bay or in the [indiscernible] Boston to residential. Our buildings do not line up with the kinds of assets that likely would be potentially convertible if the economics actually worked, which they don’t right now over the next, call it, four or five years.

Operator: Thank you. And I show our next question comes from the line of Upal Rana from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Upal Rana: Great, thanks for taking my question. Just real quick, Doug, thanks for your color on the existing pipeline. And the update on the Carnegie Center. I wanted to see if you can give us an update on the ongoing backfill at 680 Folsom and 7 Times Square?

Douglas Linde: Why don’t I let — I mean, I think, Rod, you mentioned 680 Folsom before, but you can reiterate that. And then Hilary, you can talk about 7 Times Square.

Rodney Diehl: Yes. Just real quick on 680. Yes, we have 200,000 feet on the low-rise portion of that building and it’s excellent space. It’s some of the best space in the market. It’s a nice floor plate size, it’s 34,000 feet and it’s got high ceilings and it’s excellent space. So we’ve been marketing it, and we’ve had proposals that we’ve been pursuing. And — so we’re going to continue to do that on that space, but it’s very high-quality space in our portfolio.