Egenera Finds New Home In Boxborough
PHOTO/BRANDON BUTLER
Egenera is leasing 26,000 square feet of office space at 80 Central St. in Boxborough after moving from Marlborough.
There is a lot of commercial real estate inventory on the market right now, but that doesn't mean it's always easy to find new office space.
Egenera, which makes software that helps companies manage their data centers, recently went out looking for a new location as the lease at its Marlborough headquarters was set to expire.
While there were a lot of options for space, finding one that was just right was still a process, company officials said.
Egenera and its 70 employees had fairly specific requirements. Specifically, it needed to lease space that could accommodate the company's 60 computer servers. Company officials finally settled on 26,000 square feet of space at the Tech Central business park at 80 Central St. in Boxborough, just one exit off of Interstate 495 on Route 2.
Finding The Right Fit
Hank Amabile, senior vice president with the Boston-based real estate firm Grubb & Ellis, backed up Egenera's claim that its space requirements made the hunt more challenging.
"There's plenty of plain, vanilla office space out there," said Hank Amabile, a senior vice president with Grubb & Ellis in Boston, who focuses on the MetroWest market but was not involved in the Egenera deal. "But if you have specialized needs, it can make it a little harder to find the exact right place."
Egenera narrowed the search down to four sites, including its old site on Forrest Street in Marlborough and three others. Eventually the company chose the site in Boxborough at 80 Central St.
As a space formerly used by Motorola, 80 Central St. was already equipped with the computer lab that the company needed, according to Chris Hill, Egenera's vice president of human resources. Company officials also analyzed where employees lived and how moving to Boxborough from Marlborough would impact commute times. Some employees live in Northern Massachusetts or Southern New Hampshire, according to Pete Manca, the company's president. So, the move actually made some workers' commutes a little easier.
The new space is about 2,000 square feet larger than the company's former location, which gives it some room to grow. Manca said he hopes to hire about 15 workers internationally in the coming months, some of whom will be in Massachusetts.
Egenera has international offices in China, Japan and Germany. As a privately held company, Manca would not disclose revenue figures, but he said the company is profitable and gets about half of its revenues from international operations.
Overall, the move has been a good thing, Manca said. The building has an on-site cafeteria, which the old location did not have, and as part of the move the building owner agreed to do some fit-out work to prepare the space. It was already furnished from when Motorola occupied it, Hill said.
One negative about the new location that Manca mentioned is that it is slightly further away from the Massachusetts Turnpike and other major East-West thoroughfares compared to the Route 9 area of MetroWest.
Newport Beach, Calif.-based KBS Realty Advisors owns 80 Central St. Boston commercial real estate firm FHO Partners acted as Egenera's broker on the deal.
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