Boys to Businessmen

        Cabot Properties is a real estate investment firm in Boston. Their primary business is the acquisition of industrial real estate (warehousing) and then leasing those spaces to tenants. They are funded by a variety of investors, ranging from pension funds to school endowments. Every three to five years, Cabot sells a large portion of their properties in a portfolio, concluding a fund’s cycle and providing returns to the investors. Cabot invests primarily in locations across the United States, purchasing its first ever international property in 2011. Since then, they have begun to expand into Europe via the United Kingdom.

        Cabot has only just begun its expansion into Europe, with just one employee managing the buildings. Coincidentally, that employee is a St. Mark’s alum: Jed Raymond Jr. (‘96). Furthermore, the overseer of European expansion and Vice President of the company is also an alum: Howard Hodgson (‘74).

        Last summer, the three of us worked with Cabot for Mr. Bechard (CFO) on their latest interest: Poland. The Polish market is just one of many potential next steps for Cabot, and it was our job to compile a report on the current industrial real estate in the area. We collected all of the information that we could on the industrial market in Poland and put it together for Cabot to use in their investment discussions. This was a great introduction to the realm of industrial real estate and international business in general. We knew that we would continue our work into this summer, and so when we learned about the grant opportunities we decided to take our work this year to the next level. We worked out a plan with Mr. Bechard to plan a trip to the U.K. and Poland in order to get a firsthand look at the real estate business in action. Fortunately, we were awarded the A. A. Jones Family International Studies Grant and were able to fund our trip. This website is a log of our business trip and of our work with Cabot.