Dealmaker: Mesa West Capital Lends $44M on Boston’s Newbury Street

Mesa West Capital, Los Angeles, provided ECA Capital with $43.5 million to recapitalize a high street retail property on Boston’s Newbury Street.  

The financing included $7 million of subordinate debt sold to accounts managed by BlackRock.

A nearly 25,000-square-foot retail component of a four-story brownstone at 201 Newbury Street secured the loan. The collateral includes six fully occupied street-level retail condominiums fully leased to retailers including Anthropologie, Dr. Martens, Timberland and Ted Baker London. The upper residential floors of the property were not part of the collateral.

“Newbury Street is one of the best-performing retail streets in the country and this asset is well-positioned to capitalize on the increasing demand from luxury tenants for this type of real estate,” said Mesa West Principal Ronnie Gul. Gul said the financing came from the Mesa West Core Lending Fund, which provides lower-leverage first mortgages on stabilized core assets. Mesa West’s Core Lending Fund complements its primary lending platform that provides non-recourse first mortgage debt for transitional institutional quality commercial real estate assets.

Cushman and Wakefield Associate Trisha Connolly arranged the financing. “Our client sought the optimal balance of leverage and pricing which, in this case, meant a floating-rate execution with Mesa West,” she said. “We were able to structure the loan in order to best fit the needs of our client and provide them with excess proceeds.”