Trisha Shetty (Editor)

Cross Point (Lowell, Massachusetts)

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Status
  
Complete

Phone
  
+1 978-441-3200

Height
  
51 m

Cross Point (Lowell, Massachusetts)

Type
  
Class A office building

Location
  
Lowell, Massachusetts, USA

Address
  
Crosspoint Towers, 900 Chelmsford St, Lowell, MA 01851, USA

Owners
  
Yale Properties USA, Public Sector Pension Investment Board

Similar
  
Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, Lowell Heritage State Park, Lowell Cemetery, Lowell National Historical, Six Flags New England

Cross Point is an office complex in Lowell, Massachusetts. Formerly named Wang Towers, it is a local landmark, dominating the busy intersection of Interstate 495 (the Boston outer ring road) and U.S. Route 3. It is the third-tallest building in Lowell, after Three River Place and the Kenneth R. Fox Student Union at UMass Lowell.

The complex, consisting of three interconnected cement-clad 12-storey towers and other buildings totaling over 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2) situated on 15 acres (6.1 ha), was built by original sole tenant Wang Laboratories as its new world headquarters.

Construction began in 1980, and it was completed in stages at a cost of US$60,000,000 (about $149 million in current dollars). The buildings served as a demonstration of the rise of Wang Labs and the Boston-area computer technology industry generally, and later as a sign of the rapid fall of the company and industry: Wang Labs entered bankruptcy in 1992, and the property was sold at bankruptcy auction in 1994 for a tiny fraction of its construction cost – $525,000 (about $848 thousand in current dollars) – in 1994, to Louis Pellegrine, fronting for Atlantic Retail Partners.

Atlantic renovated the towers (with the help of tax breaks and a $4 million letter of credit from the City of Lowell) and sold them in 1998 to San-Francisco-based Yale Properties USA and Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, reportedly for over $100 million. The towers acquired new tenants, but business was hurt by the 2000-2001 bursting of the "dot-com bubble", and it was described as being, by 2005, a "ghost town" with an occupancy rate of about 50%.

Yale Properties bought out Blackstone's share in 2005; in the same year San-Diego-based Divco West Properties bought an interest in the property. By 2007 the occupancy rate was back up to about 90%, with major tenants such as Motorola moving in. Yale actively shopped the property, but a 2007 deal to sell it for about $180 million to a consortium led by Davis Marcus Partners fell through. The real estate crash beginning in 2007 put severe strain on the property's finances, but Yale and Divco West (along with Canada's Public Sector Pension Investment Board) retained ownership. In 2012 the towers were about 70% filled and Colliers International was hired to boost occupancy.

The towers were sold to CP Associates LLC for $100 Million in 2014.

References

Cross Point (Lowell, Massachusetts) Wikipedia