0 Office Prices in Downtown Crossing Continue to Grow

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Banker and Tradesman

Office trades in the Class A and B segments continue northward with the latest on West Street in Downtown Crossing for $16M.

From Banker&Tradesman:

There’s “another category where they [real estate investors] see potential for price appreciation: class B office buildings…The latest example: 33-41 West St. in Downtown Crossing, a fully-leased leased office building recently acquired by a New York developer for $16 million.

At $472 per foot, it’s one of the highest prices paid for a property in the category, said Robert Tito, a principal with NAI Hunneman in Boston…Built in 1899, the 38,000-square-foot structure was last acquired in 2008 by SMC Management of Watertown for $7.2 million.”

0 Millennium Partners Adds Downtown Crossing Cafè

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Bizjournals.com

Another caffeine fill up station is coming to Downtown Crossing to serve the ever-growing day and night population.

According to the Boston Business Journal, “Millennium Partners has leased a space in Downtown Crossing’s historic Burnham Building to Caffè Nero, a European coffee house, which will bring the 335,000-square-foot commercial space at the building and the adjacent Millennium Tower to full occupancy…The coffeeshop will be located on Summer Street less than half a mile from Downtown Crossing’s first Caffè Nero, which is located at the base of Millenium Place, another high-end condominium complex developed by Millennium Partners. Caffè Nero also has locations in Jamaica Plain, the South End and the Longwood Medical area.”

You can click through to jump to the BBJ article.

0 With Boston’s Economic Growth comes… Traffic

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Image Credit: Wbur

Traffic in major cities like Boston is nothing new. Traffic for me had necessitated leaving my house in Metro West by 5:45 AM to ensure my inbound commute doesn’t take more than 25 – 35 minutes.

According to a report on wburg.org, “Greater Boston is the sixth-most-gridlock-plagued urban area in the country, and it’s costing you a lot of time and money…The average driver in the region spends 64 hours a year — a workweek-and-a-half — stuck in traffic. That’s twice what it was in Boston just 30 years ago, adding about $1,400 a year to the average commuter’s costs.”

The full article is available on WBUR.org.

0 Boston is Contemporizing Outward, not Upward

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Wil Catlin

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

Posted on June 30, 2016 by Wil Catlin

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.

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

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Wil Catlin

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

Posted on June 28, 2016 by Wil Catlin

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

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Wil Catlin

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

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Wil Catlin

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

Posted on June 15, 2016 by Wil Catlin

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.