Article Excerpt:
TWST: Would you begin with a quick sketch of Boston Properties, some highlights in the history of the company and some things it's focused on at the present time?Mr. Ritchey: Boston Properties is a publicly traded real estate investment trust. We focus on operating, acquiring, managing and, more important, developing first-class office buildings in the five top office markets in the United States of America. We have approximately 40.9 million square feet of space in-service, representing approximately 118 buildings, including many of the truly iconic buildings in our core markets of New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and Boston. We have three projects currently under development, totaling over 1 million square feet. We have a market capitalization of $15.1 billion of which $10.3 billion is equity and 4.8 billion is debt. That's a 32% level of debt, which is quite low for a company of our size ' especially given the quality of our assets and the quality of our tenants. We have five regional offices. Each one is self-operating with the ability to manage the existing portfolio and oversee development in that region. In terms of our current activities, specifically in our Washington region, we have a number of projects underway, including an expansion of our Capital Gallery project from 400,000 square feet to 600,000 square feet in Southwest Washington. We have a new office building of approximately 280,000 square feet under construction in Chevy Chase, Maryland. We recently completed a 180,000 square foot build-to-suit project for Lockheed Martin in western Virginia. We just broke ground on a new headquarters for Piper Rudnick, a law firm in Washington DC, at the corner of 9th and E Street. We are quite excited about this because it's the third building in the new East End of Washington. DC, that we have undertaken. That building is 75% pre-leased. Lastly, we are quite excited about the expansion of our presence in Reston Town Center, recognized as one of the top mixed-use projects in the United States. We are starting construction on a 620,000 square foot mixed-use project there, breaking ground in March of this year.
Tickers included in this excerpt: BXP
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