By M. Renee Buckley, North Andover Citizen
February 25, 2009

With the final Lucent employees packed up and moved out as of their lease expiration Jan. 31, North Andover’s Osgood Landing has a lot of space to fill — at least 70 percent of 1,367,840 square feet of rentable space — but owner Ozzy Properties is taking it one lease at a time.

“We have a lot of space, but we’re also getting ready to open a new portion of the office building. We filled the ground floor and now we’re working on the second floor of the office building,” said Ellen J. Keller, vice president of commercial real estate for North-Andover-based Ozzy Properties.

Asked how long the second-floor construction will take, Keller said the work is done on an as-needed basis.

“It’s ready as it needs to be ready. When we sign the new leases we start that construction. We’re negotiating with a couple leases right now and we’re hoping that they’ll sign and we’ll start that,” she said.

Since Ozzy Properties began marketing the former Lucent company’s space at Osgood Landing in late 2004/early 2005, Keller said they’ve leased approximately 100,000 square feet of space each year. To date, the company has about 400,000 feet under lease agreements, which range in size from the smallest at 900 square feet to the largest at almost 60,000 square feet.

Most recently the group has signed leases with two new tenants — Firepro Inc., who just signed a seven-year lease, and Luci’s Café, which has taken the place of the cafeteria at the southeast side of the building, Keller said.

For the first time, the cafeteria area — now Luci’s Café — is open to the public.
“In years past the [town’s] zoning didn’t permit the cafeteria to reach out to the public. It was exclusive to employees of Lucent. Now the zoning has changed thanks to the town of North Andover,” said Keller, who added Luci’s is making a concerted effort to appeal to the public.

While the past food vendor catered to an enormous number of Lucent employees, Luci’s Café is a smaller enterprise, and as a result is operating in a completely renovated space.

“It was time for a change. It needed an upgrade, so to speak,” Keller said. “It wasn’t particularly efficient. It was used for serving hundreds of Lucent employees. Now it’s all brand new. It reopened just this past January.”

Those interested in checking out the café can access it from the southeast side of the building, on the left side of the building when looking at it from Route 125. Access is via the entrance at the traffic light across from the Shell gas station, and Keller said parking is right in front of the building in the visitors’ parking lot. Signs will direct visitors to Luci’s, she said.

Luci’s is located in the office building portion of the site, which is actually composed of three different buildings, though many think it’s all one big structure, Keller said.

“There’s the office building, the manufacturing building and the warehouse. What you see from the street is all office space,” she said.

Asked if Osgood Landing is feeling the commercial real estate slump, Keller said the space isn’t immune to the problem, and there isn’t as much activity as they’d like to see.

“Will we do well this year? My crystal ball is as fuzzy as everyone else’s. We’re certainly trying to be as aggressive as possible and bring in those companies,” she said.

Have they had to drop prices?

“I think you have to. But I think I should also state that we have always been below market. Our office and market rates are below market and have been since the beginning,” Keller said.