Dennis Clarke
Title: President and CEO, Cummings Properties
Age: 49
Experience: 22 years
The midst of a deep regional recession wasn’t the best time to be looking for a job in commercial real estate: That was the message that Dennis Clarke got when he cold-called Woburn-based Cummings Properties in 1992. But there was an opportunity in ad sales and business development at Cummings’ newly launched newspaper subsidiary, the Woburn Advocate, so Clarke “slid in a side door” and worked his way up to publisher while the company added publications in Stoneham and Winchester. After the publications were acquired by Community Newspaper Co. in 1996, Clarke got an offer for the type of real estate job he wanted in the first place, as head of Cummings’ Woburn-based property management group. He was named president and CEO in 2004.
Q: What are the economic development opportunities in the Woburn and MetroNorth suburban market?
A: It’s an extremely healthy market. It’s fairly well-balanced, too. Vacancy rates are low, relatively speaking, but there’s still enough options out there for clients to have choice. It keeps things competitive in a good way. From a challenges standpoint, there’s a perception that there’s a notable migration of firms to more urban locations. While that’s true, there are some firms that are choosing the suburbs. The flow is in both directions, and just as many firms, if not more from our perspective, are coming out to the 128 and 495 belts.
Another challenge and opportunity is public transit. There’s increasing awareness among some client firms that being on transit or close enough for it to be walkable is desirable. It’s not everybody. It’s not even a majority, but there’s a meaningful percentage of firms that look at public transit as a requirement.
Q: Do you offer any corporate shuttles?
A: We haven’t done that. We’ve worked hard to get public transit bus service at our major business parks including Cummings Center, TradeCenter 128 and in Cummings Park. If you have enough density and you get public bus service, we think there’s value there.
Q: What percentage of Cummings’ portfolio is life science or medical and how much is driven by migration out of Cambridge?
A: About 20 percent of our portfolio is life science. If you include medical and health care, now you’re up north of 25 percent, maybe 30 percent. A healthy amount of can be attributed to firms that started in Boston or Cambridge. We had a company called SolidEnergy which moved from Cambridge. It had origins at MIT and took 23,000 square feet in Woburn at 35 Cabot Road. enEvolv recently moved from Boston to 10,000 square feet in Medford.
Q: How has the office amenities revolution affected capital improvements?
A: Interestingly, the Cummings organization recognized decades ago that convenience service amenities within business parks was a good thing. It’s not new at all for us. We make continual reinvestment in all of our properties. We customize client spaces on an as-needed basis. One of our oddities is that we have in-house people to do almost everything, including designing and building out spaces or whole buildings. That gives us an unusual amount of control over timing and cost of improvements.
Q: You recently branched out into multifamily development with the Elliott Landing complex in Beverly. Any plans to do more?
A: The first units were conveyed around Thanksgiving 2016 and we were fully committed this spring. Almost all of those were sales, although we did rent a handful because the rental market was extremely lucrative. Cummings Center is almost fully developed. Realistically there’s space for another building in the north end of the property and we think the most appropriate use would be another multi-unit residential building, although this one would be a rental offering. We haven’t filed with the city yet, but don’t be surprised if you saw that.
We also have a second large campus in Beverly in an earlier stage of development, Dunham Ridge. It was built as the headquarters of Parker Brothers and we acquired it in 2011. We’ve got three new buildings permitted, two of which are under development: 150,000 square feet of mixed-use office and lab apiece, and then we created a land condominium and we sold 4 acres to Vitality Senior Living, which has been fully permitted for an 118-unit assisted living facility. There are several more lots at (54-acre) Dunham Ridge and we’ll eventually develop them ourselves, or if third parties come along, they’re for sale.
Q: Are you looking for additional acquisitions?
A: We are opportunistic investors. We don’t have any set growth plan right now. Our primary focus is on operating the existing portfolio as efficiently and well as we can. At the same time, we do want to look at new investments on a routine basis. We tend to look for opportunities other people aren’t interested in and where we think we can add some unusual value, such as Dunham Ridge.
Our most recent acquisition was 40 Shattuck Road in Andover, a 130,000-square-foot office and research building, from Boston Properties. That was attractive to us because the geography was more northerly than our portfolio had been previously. Our most northern buildings were in Wilmington, and that got us up into the 495 belt.
Clarke’s Five Favorite Local Places to Explore and Enjoy With Children:
- Museum of Natural History at Harvard University
- Minuteman Bike Trail
- Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester
- Museum of Science
- Winchester’s ballfields
- and playgrounds
