0 Tips on Designing Cool Creative Office Space

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Fastcodesign

Cool and creative office design can be found workdwide. Check out the top 16 according to “The Creative Workplace.”

From FastCodesign:

“The big challenge with a lot of creative studios is that they started with a small group of people, and as an agency grows to 10 or 20 people, suddenly you have people with different creative processes,” [design writer Rob] Alderson says. Historically, he says, workplace culture has skewed toward extroverts, thus the Ping-Pong tables and wacky flourishes that have become cliches at tech companies and are supposed to encourage employees to interact with each other.

You can view examples on FastCodesign.com

0 Winthrop Square Site Mulls Offers

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Herald

Winthrop Square site moves $50M to $150M closer to having a new owner. The devil is in the details, but the blighted garage has to go.

According to the Boston Herald, “the six teams vying to redevelop Boston’s Winthrop Square garage site have made offers to buy the property that are as varied as their development proposals for the city-owned Financial District parcel, which could land one of the city’s tallest towers at 750 feet…Offers ranged from $50 million by Boston’s Accordia Partners to $150.8 million by New York’s Millennium Partners…The city will choose between selling the approximately 1-acre site or signing a long-term ground lease with the chosen developer. If it opts for a lease, the offers would be a starting point for negotiations, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.”

The full Herald article is available on its website: BostonHerald.com

0 Boston Seaport Still Emerging

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Rendering of an upcoming Boston Seaport development

Credit: New York Times

The Boston Seaport is the perfect assemblage of the old and new for live, work and play.

A recently NYTimes article on the Seaport notes the following:

Thomas M. Menino, a city mayor who died in 2014, had envisioned the area, just across the Fort Point Channel from downtown as an “innovation district,” with state-of-the-art office space, plenty of walk-to-work apartments, numerous restaurants, and pedestrian-friendly streets and parks. Since 2000, the area has gained 10 million square feet of development and more than 4,000 residents. And in recent years, the appetite for a Seaport address has only increased, such that 2,700 residential units and 1.3 million square feet of office space are now in some stage of construction, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

From upstart technology companies to cutting-edge biomedical firms to traditional corporate giants, the Seaport is attracting businesses to both brick-and-beam style office space in old industrial buildings and to new glass office towers overlooking Boston Harbor.

Continue reading for more info and related listings for Seaport office space.

0 Boston Ranks First among ‘Startup hubs in the U.S.’

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Business Journal

Boston is number one in so many ways, here is the latest one.

From the Boston Business Journal:

Boston is ranked No. 1 among the top 25 startup hubs in the U.S., according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and startup incubator 1776. The ranking means Boston is best positioned to lead the digital economy, though it has work to do when it comes to corporate engagement, the report found.

The San Francisco Bay Area is still the leader in total startup activity, but “Boston earned the top spot by having clear emphasis on next generation tech companies specializing in education, energy and healthcare industries; high quality of life ratings; and a welcoming regulatory environment for startup communities,” according to a release from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

0 Class B Office Space in Downtown Crossing Could Net $50M

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Financial district boston office building

Credit: BBJ

Class B office space at 258-262 Washington St. and 85 Devonshire St. in Downtown Crossing could fetch in excess of $525 PSF. The Class B office market in the Financial District has seen strong rent growth over the last 36 months with prices ranging from the upper $30’s to the upper $40’s PSF.

From the Boston Business Journal:

The buildings together encompass about 92,000 square feet and span the stretch of Water Street between Washington and Devonshire streets near the State Street MBTA stop…Boston-based real estate investment and development firm KS Partners owns the property and has invested more than $5 million in the past three years to help rejuvenate it.

Marketing materials obtained by the Business Journal indicate that the the Washington and Devonshire property is “one of the last Downtown Class B repositioning opportunities” that is “an opportunity to capture momentum” for retail repositioning along Washington Street. The stretch of Washington Street fronts the Freedom Trail and is currently leased by a Subway and a Vitamin Shoppe.

0 Bruins’ Practice Facility in Brighton gets Finishing Touches

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Wil Catlin

hockey stick for bruins practice facility in Brighton

Credit: CBS

What is 68 feet tall and weighs in over 7,000 pounds? A giant hockey stick that will reside at the new practice facility of the Boston Bruins in Brighton, MA.

From CBS Local:

The replica stick, made of steel, was constructed by Diamond Iron Works in Lawrence. Owner Steve Doherty said that getting the blade to look right was the most difficult part for the 12.5:1-scale stick.

“We got about 450 man hours into fabricating the stick,” said Doherty.

The Boston Bruins said in a release that the area will be open to the public when the Warrior Ice Arena opens in September.

0 Is this the end for Boston’s Famed Citgo sign?

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Globe

Boston’s iconic Citgo sign might go dark after the building is sold.

From the Globe’s website:

As several prominent development companies angle to buy the nine-building package [Boston University is selling in Kenmore Square], they are weighing a delicate question: how to redevelop them — as any new owner would be likely to do — without blocking or moving the sign so it is no longer so visible from so many places around the city.

Moving the sign and replacing 660 Beacon with a taller building wouldn’t be difficult, said Arthur Krim, a faculty member at Boston Architectural College and the sign’s unofficial historian. But move it much, and the views would be altered forever.

“Sightlines would be skewed,” Krim said. “Anything above 15 stories and it’d be hard to see up there at all.”

0 Fish Pier Remains Central to Boston Seaport

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Globe

Boston’s Seaport is far more than just home to GE and Vertex, it is also home to a thriving fish business.

From the Boston Globe:

“Just like a Ford has parts from different parts of the world, I think Boston is becoming this seaport hub, and that allows us to be very successful,” said Richard Stavis, chief executive of Stavis Seafoods, a Boston-based national seafood distributor with offices on Fish Pier.

“Fish Pier is one of the handful of places in the world where you can actually dock vessels and unload fish and have it processed. . . . That’s a big draw,” said Lisa Wieland, the port director for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which owns Fish Pier and the neighboring Marine Terminal where other seafood dealers are located.

Fish Pier generated $4.7 million in revenues for Massport in fiscal 2015 and barely broke even on an operating basis, the agency said.

0 Bisnow Posts Cool Office Spaces in Boston

Posted on July 2, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Bisnow

The cool office contestants have submitted their new digs. Please have a look and see how yours stacks up.

Bisow recently released its monthly reader pics, noting “It’s been a month since we asked for cool office space pictures, and the submissions have been coming in steadily—with about 95% of them cool (though we did get a pic of a cubicle farm, as retro ’80s as Ferris Bueller; it might be cool again in 20 years). Keep them coming to dees.stribling@bisnow.com.”

Read more at Bisnow.

0 Winthrop Square Garage Project Looks to Add Developer

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Globe

The shuttered city garage on Federal Street was on center stage at the Great Hall at Faneuil Hall, so to speak. What is in store for our future?

From the Boston Globe:

Six teams of developers and architects, eager in their suits, stood by posterboard presentations and 3-D models and explained the tall towers they’d very much like to build on the site of the Winthrop Square Garage in downtown Boston…Looking at the presentations, one could be forgiven for forgetting that these developers are vying to build one of the tallest buildings in Boston. Sure, everyone had a scale model of their full tower, but most focused their energies on the space where the building meets the street, and on the soaring public halls, pocket parks, and black-box theaters they’re promising to enliven it. After all, that’s where most Bostonians would experience these buildings most of the time.

The BRA says it wants to name a developer soon, but expect it to be months, not weeks, before that happens. The authority hasn’t yet opened financial documents attached to the proposals, which detail offers to purchase or lease the site and each team’s wherewithal to build the thing. After that’s done, BRA real estate chief Ed O’Donnell said, the authority is likely to winnow the pack down to a few finalists and invite them in for another round of interviews. While O’Donnell insists he’d like to name a developer while the real estate market is still hot, reading between the lines that sounds more like it will happen in August or September than in July.