By Seth Daniel
A husband and wife real estate team has purchased the historic Slade’s Mill property on the Parkway for $2.12 million, and said they are looking at other opportunities in the area.
“It’s a very unique building and has a long a great history,†said Sean Yu, a partner in Sunyu Properties with his wife, Mrs. Sun. “The building is very solid and very nicely restored. There are lots of good tenants there – working professionals. The tenants say it’s a very private location and the Creek has a very nice view…We plan to keep it like it is because it is on the Historic Register. So, we want to maintain it and keep it up.â€
He said they plan to keep the museum open in the ground floor. He has also created a brand new website for the property which contains a lively history of the historic mill. There are 18 units in the building, which Yu said are typically fully leased. He said a studio has come available and he is marketing it for $1,350.
Sunyu, based in Andover where the family lives, has been buying lots of real estate properties in Tewksbury, Lowell, Andover, and North Reading. Recently, they made a purchase in Quincy and are concentrating on moving closer to Boston.
“Revere is very close to Boston – five or six miles,†he said. “It’s also very cheap compared to a place like New York City. You can see the potential around the Boston area is better compared to other places.â€
Yu said he is very impressed with the entire Rt. 16 corridor, with hotels opening in Everett and Chelsea recently. He also cited the new FBI building in Chelsea, the Wynn Boston Harbor casino, the Forbes plane across the Creek in Chelsea and the Suffolk Downs site.
He said they were able to get a loan from East Boston Savings Bank to make the purchase, and he said they hope to find more opportunities as well.
“We are pursuing more opportunities here,†he said. “We’re just learning the area now. Before, we didn’t know much about the area, but the more we learn, it’s very interesting.â€
The Slade’s Mill is perhaps the oldest remaining building in the City. It traces its roots back to Colonial times as a tidal gristmill. It was used as a spice-grinding mill for the Bell Company later in its history.
The 1990s and 2000s weren’t nice to the property, as it went vacant and dilapidated. High Tech guru Robert Brooker came to town in 2006, though, and had a dream to completely refurbish the property to historic standards – transforming it into a unique residential structure.
The project ran long and expensive, but Brooker completed it.
It has been a successful rental property every since.
Sunyu purchased the property from Christopher Shachoy. Yu said that Shachoy’s business was primarily based in Cambridge, and he wanted to divest of properties not within that footprint.
Yu is the former president of Step Digital LLC of Brookline and China. The high tech company developed high performance video algorithms for video conferencing, multimedia streaming, video surveillance, PVR and portable media player applications.
All of the intellectual properties developed by Step Digital, and the company itself, were acquired by Grandstream Networks in October 2006.
Yu said he and his wife became involved in real estate investing a few years ago after the housing crisis of 2008.