0 Boston is Contemporizing Outward, not Upward

Credit: B&T

Credit: B&T

Boston is clearly seeing a tremendous amount of new construction from office to multi-family in all areas of the city. Once you dig deeper into the numbers you come to realize that the height of the vast majority of new projects doesn’t exceed 200 – 300 feet. The exceptions are 1 Dalton and Millennium Tower at 700 feet and 690 feet, respectively. Boston developers instead are building what the market wants at a price point the market can support. Some of the challenges with going about 300 feet requires an additional elevator core which increases the add on factor.

According to Banker and Tradesman, “almost all of Boston’s true office skyscrapers – 500 feet and up – were built in the 1980s and before. The Hancock and Prudential towers may be gems of the Boston skyline, but they are also the last of a dying breed and one we are unlikely to see again anytime soon…Since 2000, Boston has seen 52 new office, condo and apartment buildings take shape. The vast majority of them – 36 – are between 200 and 300 feet.”

You can read the full article on B&T’s website.

0 Cambridge and Kendall Square Office Rents Continue to Surge

In short, the Office market in greater Boston has rents continuing to surge upward with fewer available options. Kendall Square and select Cambridge neighborhoods lead the charge, with rents up 76% since 2010.

Chart of Boston office rent prices

Credit: The Real Reporter

From The Real Reporter:

Kendall has enjoyed the most dramatic surge in rents during the present economic boom, currently going into its seventh year, as local rents bottomed out in 2010 following the mortgage recession.  Other areas benefitting from current dynamics include most urban areas as well as the Western suburbs, including 9 West, buoyed by changes in Needham.

Vacancy remains at very low levels as 49,000 sf of positive absorption was balanced with 66,000 sf of new property completions, resulting in a slight vacancy uptick of 0.1 percent, to 5.5 percent.

0 Hancock Tower Remains Largely Unoccupied

Hancock Tower in back bay

Credit: Boston Globe

New England’s tallest building has space for you. The tower has approximately 450,000 square feet available for lease.

From the Boston Globe:

About one-fourth of the space in 200 Clarendon — or what most of us still call the John Hancock Tower — is sitting vacant after leases expired and tenants such as John Hancock moved to new digs. Landlord Boston Properties Inc. acknowledged Wednesday that efforts to fill it have been going “a little bit slow.”

Rents at the top of the tower run $70 to $80 per square foot — among the priciest in town. Boston Properties has given no sign it plans to offer discounts to fill 450,000 vacant square feet. Still, the slowdown reflects a bit of a softening at the very top of Boston’s market. Real estate brokers say law firms, financiers, and others who seek trophy office space are pushing back against building owners who want to hike rents.

You can read the full Globe article, here.

0 100 Northern Ave. will be Dancing in Flight

Air Jumpers in Boston Seaport

Image Credit: Boston Globe

Joe Fallon’s 100 Northern Ave. in the Seaport is preparing for a launch party different then we have seen before: vertical dance. Boston’s Seaport is one of the country’s hottest submarkets with office tower trades in excess of $1,000 per square foot and the new world headquarters to GE.

According to the Boston Globe, “the vertical dance group Bandaloop rehearsed its creative moves from the 17th floor of the new building on 100 Northern Ave. on Tuesday…The pioneering vertical dance company is making a rare appearance in Boston to commemorate The Fallon Company’s latest development milestone: The 534,000-square-foot, 17-story commercial building. It’s the fifth building to be completed at the vibrant, mixed-use Fan Pier neighborhood and is set against the backdrop of Boston’s cityscape and Boston Harbor.”

You can read the full article on the Globe’s website.

0 Highest-rated CEO in Boston Overtakes San Francisco’s Top Exec

Bain and Co. CEO

Credit: BBJ

Boston beat out the Bay area for the highest rated CEO according to Glassdoor. Google moves to 7th place as Bain takes the 1st place spot.

According to the BBJ, “Bob Bechek, worldwide managing director of Bain & Co. “scored a 99 percent approval rating from employees and former employees on the site [and] overtook former Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page, who was No. 1 on the list last year…Bechek, a Harvard Business School graduate, has been working at the Boston-based management consulting business for the past 30 years and has been CEO since 2012.”

You can read the full article on the Boston Business Journal’s website, here.

0 Boston to host 2017 U.S.-China Climate Summit

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Secretary of State John F. Kerry meet with Chinese representatives

Credit: Boston Globe

Boston is home to long-haul, nonstop daily flights to Shanghai and Beijing.  In addition, Boston will host the U.S. / China Climate summit in 2017.

From the Boston Business Journal:

“I am honored to announce that Boston will build on our global climate leadership to host next year’s U.S.-China Climate Leaders’ Summit,” said [Boston Mayor Marty] Walsh in a statement. “There is no more pressing, or defining, global challenge than climate change. We know we must be making investments now to create a more sustainable future for the world we share. I look forward to continuing these substantive, challenging conversations in Boston.”

The first summit occurred last September in Los Angeles and included a keynote address by Vice President Joe Biden and China’s State Councilor Yang Jiechi as well as the signing by 24 state and local leaders of a first-of-its-kind “U.S.-China Climate Leaders Declaration.”

0 Boston Towers Still Short of Manhattan’s Scale

Boston office towers

Credit: The Real Reporter

Boston won’t be scaling up to the development heights of projects underway in NYC.  Boston’s newest tower comes in at nearly half the height of New York’s Nordstrom Tower.

From The Real Reporter:

When comparing to New York’s major projects under development, Boston comes up very short with Millennium Tower as its tallest, versus Nordstrom Tower, by more than double its size.  Nordstrom Tower (when complete) is set to be crowned the World’s tallest, towering in at 1,775 Feet, while Millennium will top off at 685 feet.

0 11 Massachusetts Companies Climb Fortune 500 List

boston office building

Credit: BBJ

Massachusetts is on the march up the fortune 500 list with all but 12 of the companies advancing from their standing last year. The list next year will add GE, which placed 11th on the current list.

From the Boston Business Journal:

Again leading the way in Massachusetts was Boston-based insurance giant Liberty Mutual, which rose to No. 73 on the list after finishing No. 78 last year. Springfield’s MassMutual jumped nearly 20 spots on the list to No. 76, and this year Framingham-based retailer TJX (NYSE: TJX) entered the Fortune 100, coming in at No. 89 after ranking No. 103 last year.

0 230K SF Office Building Planned at South End Garage

rendering of office tower at South End garage site

Credit: Banker&Tradesman

Daily garage parking in Boston’s urban core is some of the most expensive in the country. Combine that with our tight office market, and you have a swell of new opportunities across the city. The proposal brought forth by Nordblom is a 230K SF building atop 321 Harrison Avenue.

From B&T:

Designed by SMMA of Cambridge, the office building would be built of insulated glass in a metal panel system with some curtain walls with floor-to-ceiling glazing. The building will have sweeping views of the Financial District and Back Bay and be designed with totally open floor plates with “exceptional” ceiling heights, said Og Hunnewell, a partner with Nordblom Co.

The ground floor would include cultural or gallery space at the corner of Herald Street and Harrison Avenue. Copley Wolff Design Group is the landscape architect. Open space is planned next to 1000 Washington St., an 11-story, 234,900-square-foot office building that shares the site and will be retained.

Nordblom estimates the project would create 1,500 permanent jobs.

0 Downtown Crossing Embodies Boston’s Modernization

view of Boston from a roof deck

Credit: BBJ

Boston’s Downtown Crossing (DTX) is ground zero for development and change in Boston. The $3.9 billion invested in the past decade is evident by transformations to the streetscape and skyline.

According to the Boston Business Journal, “the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District recently issued a report titled ‘The Transformation of Downtown Crossing’ to provide a progress report about the district’s development.”

“We have seen tremendous growth in a number of areas throughout the BID — from major new construction, such as 45 Province, Millennium Place and Millennium Tower, to a growing number of retail and new businesses that are attracting additional employees and clients to the area, to our status as one of the fastest growing residential neighborhoods in the city,” said Rosemarie Sansone, president and CEO of the BID, in the report. “The next phase of our development includes a strategic planning exercise, which will be under way soon.”

You can read the full article on the BBJ’s website.