The Government Center T Stop is at the hallway point in the renovation process. The stop first opened with the Green Line in 1898 then added the Blue Line in 1916. In 2013 the average weekday boarding’s was 10,828 and I expect most of those passengers are looking forward to the station reopening in 2016.
Monthly Archives: April 2015
0 Belkin Bolsters Winthrop Square Development Team
Jason Krebs might be the catalyst to build one of Boston’s newest office towers at Winthrop Square in the Financial District.
According to Banker&Tradesman, “Former Normandy Real Estate Partners executive Justin Krebs is teaming up with developer Steve Belkin to bolster Belkin’s attempts to build a 740-foot-tall skyscraper in downtown Boston…Belkin’s proposal is expected to be just one of several for the site which contains a four-story, 1,125-space parking garage that was closed in May 2013 due to its deteriorating condition.”
You can read the full B&T article, here.
0 Private Offices or Open Floor Plan?
Is your preference to have a private office or open plan? Open is the current rage, but this may not rein true over the long haul. Quiet zones, skype rooms and meeting rooms seem to be taking the place of the private office which leads to more common space and smaller personal space.
From the Boston Globe:
Some 80 percent of offices these days are “open,” roughly defined as work spaces that minimize doors in favor of low (or no) partitions, shared desks, and a full-on view of any number of people at once, very often the boss included. There are two reasons for the format’s popularity. The first is the cost of real estate, says Jeffrey Tompkins, a partner at Boston architecture and interior design firm Spagnolo Gisness & Associates. Twenty-five years ago, he says, the standard allotment was 250 square feet per worker. Now it’s 160 to 190. Simple math says you can fit in more employees when you don’t need to work around walls.
The bigger driving factor, however, has been the pervasive idea that open offices encourage collaboration, spark creative conversation, and increase productivity. Since there’s really no such thing as a private conversation in many of these offices, they also serve to symbolize the modern, egalitarian workplace ideal: one big happy family that types together, eats together, and works through personal drama together. “I love the ability to know what’s going on with all the projects around me,” says Faith Marabella, the CEO and president of Wellesley Design Consultants, whose offices transitioned from mostly to fully open a few years back. “I also like the quick interactions that can happen. Everybody can lend a hand when needed and go back to individual tasks when things calm.” The open environment, she says, also lets less experienced staffers listen and learn.
0 Boston Commercial Real Estate Retrospective
The city of Boston that is home to a wide variety of college, universities, professional sports team, hospitals and companies is changing. We have created the Back Bay, built office tower and now adding more buildings to our skyline. No longer are the tower views home to companies, but residences.
The Boston Globe has put together a retrospective, “A new age for an old town”, tracing the Hub’s commercial transformation. The article notes the following:
Today, Boston Properties, one of the city’s most prolific builders, is developing a 17-story office building on the final parcel within the Prudential complex. Meanwhile, the area around the Pru is exploding with new projects and proposals for hotels and towering residential buildings.
“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Bob Richards, a partner at Transwestern RBJ. “What’s driving it is the top-tier labor talent in industries like technology and life sciences. The young people who work for those companies want to live in an urban environment.”
Not coincidentally, the city’s population is rising more rapidly than it has in decades. The total head count rose by nearly 30,000 people, to about 646,000, between 2010 and 2013, according to the US Census Bureau. That’s more population growth in three years than Boston experienced in the 1980s and ’90s combined.
0 Renovations on Boston Public Library Chronicled on BBJ
The Boston Public Library on Boylston Street in Back Bay is changing. The McKim Building built in 1895 faces Copley Square and contains the library’s research collection. The Jonson Building which opened in 1972 is the area of renovation.
The $75.5 million project will be complete by summer 2016. A slideshow of the renovations is available on the Boston Business Journal’s website.
0 Notable Tenants Looking for Office Space in Boston
What large office tenants in the city of Boston are looking for a new home? Biznow offers its take on the top tenants looking for space in 2015 in the Boston office market. Included in their list are the following:
- Putnam Investments (One Post Office Square)
- BNY Mellon (One Boston Place)
- Wells Fargo (Two International Place)
- Digitas (33 Arch St.)
- Houghton Mifflin (222 Berkeley /500 Boylston St in Back Bay)
- PwC (125 High St.)
- Goodwin Procter (53 State St.)
- State Street (Hancock Tower)
0 Hancock Tower Looks to Attract Boston Tech Companies
- Bain Capital
- CRA International
- Oliver Wyman
- Carat International
- TA Associates
- Berkshire Partners
- Arclight Capital
From the Boston Globe:
“Frankly, the tech guys, where most of the demand in the market is, are not necessarily looking to go into a building that’s very corporate feeling,” Martel said. “These technology firms didn’t really care as much about the views. They liked the value, good clear [ceiling] heights, and efficiency.”
0 Kayak Hosts Cambridge Hackathon to Recruit New Hires
Today’s office tenants are not only using their office to house their staff, meet and greet their customers, but now as a recruiting tool. Kayak hosted an event for new recruits earlier this year at their new 42,000 square foot facility.
From the BBJ:
The chance for non-Kayak employees to show off their tech skills is a win-win for the company and for those techies, said Kayak chief technology officer Giorgos Zacharia in a recent interview.
“We want to be known as a cool company in this area,” said Zacharia. “People don’t know that we moved. The hackathon is a way to make it known that Kayak is now in Cambridge and we’re in this amazing space.”
0 Storm-Resistant AquaFence will Shield Atlantic Wharf Building
I must admit I have never heard of this, AquaFence. Boston Properties the owner of Atlantic Wharf at 280 Congress is on the forefront of flood prevention.
A WGBH news article describes the AquaFence; “when it’s assembled, an AquaFence turns a single building into something like a walled city, with one big difference: the side of the wall facing out — toward the encroaching storm water — is connected to a series of panels that lie on the ground. Atlantic Wharf’s property manager, Barrett Cooke, says floodwater is supposed to cover those panels on the ground, weighing them down and strengthening the whole AquaFence.”
Some of the tenants for 280 Congress Street are:
• Wellington Financial
• McKinsey
• TripAdvisor
• Raptor Group
0 Boylston Street Filling with Consumer Tech Storefronts
Not only does the Boston Marathon run down Boylston Street, but now that is followed by every tech consumer. Boylston Street is home to the newly opened Verizon mega store at 745 Boylston Street. The next block over at 699 Boylston Street is home to the AT&T mega store. AT&T and Verizon followed the leader, Apple which opened at 815 Boylston Street and Microsoft which is in the Prudential complex at 800 Boylston Street. Need a gadget or some tech support? It can all be had on Boylston between 699 & 800 Boylston Street.
The BBJ summarizes the recent additions, noting “Verizon [is] opening up a superstore on Boylston Street in Boston’s Back Bay later this month. Now today, it’s AT&T that says it’s going to open a 9,000-square-foot store at 699 Boylston, not too far away from the Verizon superstore, which is at 745 Boylston…Both stores show how much Apple has changed the retail experience” in the Back Bay.
You can read more on the Boston Business Journal.
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