It was a year when auctions grabbed the headlines, rents plummeted, vacancies soared and massive commercial real estate projects stalled.
“This crisis is international,” said Roy MacDowell, president of Boulder Capital, whose $500 million mixed-use project on more than 700 acres in Hopkinton is on hold. “And Boston is not immune.”
In 2009, the John Hancock Tower sold at auction for $660 million, about half what it fetched two years ago; a German bank foreclosed on the 119-acre Polaroid campus when the development team failed to refinance its debt for a $500 million plan to transform the empty space into a 6 million square-foot office and retail complex on Route 128; and Corcoran Jennison Cos.’ Bayside Associates LP lost the Bayside Expo Center at a foreclosure auction.
