Additional adjustments in retail store for Harvard Sq.

CAMBRIDGE — Pandemic or no, it is a safe guess that the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university will continue to keep on going. And that helps make a building across the avenue from Harvard Garden a fantastic investment decision, no make a difference what is likely on in the world.

That is the imagining of Jeff Mooallem, chief government of Gazit Horizons, a New York-centered real estate company that shut Tuesday on a $45 million deal to obtain the School House setting up, at 1430 Mass. Ave., in the heart of Harvard Square. The 50,000-square-foot developing, with storefronts on the floor flooring and business office space higher than, is the hottest in a string of properties to trade palms in the landmark square in latest yrs, offering rise to concerns its retail base is hollowing out.

But in this case, with two of the building’s main retail tenants — a CVS and a Santander Bank department — the two established to vacate the building’s storefronts in 2021, it is really a likelihood to convey in one thing new, Mooallem claimed.

“We see this as an prospect to reposition it,” he stated. “We could definitely build a little something exceptional.”

The timing of Gazit Horizons’s expenditure — amid a world-wide health crisis that is devastating community retail and wiping out scholar foot traffic — could seem odd, but Mooallem mentioned it’s just the reverse.

His business, which owns very similar mixed-use buildings on Newbury Street and in Downtown Crossing, has been wanting for possibilities in Cambridge for some time, but couldn’t make the funds do the job on past structures that have occur up for sale in Harvard Sq.. Earlier this calendar year, the School Residence building’s longtime owner, College Widespread Serious Estate, place it up for sale, and the two get-togethers immediately achieved a offer. The pandemic, Mooallem claimed, altered the math for this kind of investments.

“This is just one we could get cozy with,” Mooallem reported. “The pricing has altered across the board.”

The market, of system, has altered, way too. With each workplace workers and students largely absent all through the slide, Harvard Square has been quiet. In fact, the Coop, a several doors down, introduced this week that it’s closing its most important entrance on Massachusetts Avenue until eventually April even though renovations are underway. Gazit also strategies to acquire gain of the sluggish months to appear to start renovations of its new home, blowing out the aged two-story CVS to make a big, significant-ceilinged area.

At some point, he reported, it will be stuffed by a new tenant. College students and employees will return. Harvard Sq. will yet again be the vivid hub of commerce it has been for centuries. And Gazit will possess a piece of it.

“We have a really good emotion about this,” Mooallem explained. “Harvard is not likely any where.”

Tim Logan can be reached at [email protected]. Observe him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.