Credit: Curbed Boston
The Boston Skyline is expect to change by 2020 and here’s what it might look like. The interesting part of this is 3 of the top 10 are residential, where is years past the top 10 have always been office.
Curbed, Boston recently published a projected list of the 10 tallest buildings in 2020, including the following three:
You can find the full list on Curbed Boston
Credit: Boston Globe
Colleges and offices seem to be getting rid of them. When I tour office space with clients and review plans one items I never see is a mail room with mailboxes in it. Rest assured we still get mail, but by no means is it the mainstay of communication.
According to an article in the Boston Globe “at the end of the summer, the [Bates College] boxes will click shut for the last time, a sign of how the Internet is changing college campuses.”
The Globe’s article is available, here.
Staples will be offering far more than office supplies; they’re now also providing office space. Yes, the new rollout will allow you to have office space where you buy supplies.
What they have:
The real question: do I want my clients to visit me at Staples?
According to a press release, Staples will be opening up communal workspaces at three locations in the Greater Boston area.
Credit: Boston Magazine
If living in the tallest residential building in New England is you dream, 1 Dalton Street should be on your list.
One Dalton, by the numbers:
From Boston Magazine:
Daltonians will enjoy five-star amenities that would make a Back Bay brownstone dweller swoon. Want a martini at 3 a.m.? A bartender from the 50th-floor private restaurant will oblige. Longing for the links? Visit the golf simulation room. There’s also a private theater, spa, salon, and health club—plus a 24-hour valet, laundry services, and housekeeping.
At home, residents can take in unobstructed views of the city from floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Many units have private balconies; all have fireplaces. One-bedrooms start at 900 square feet, and four- bedrooms start at 4,000 square feet, with an average expected cost of about $6 million.
Additional information is available on Boston Magazine.
Credit: BBJ
Lyft is on the move for a new office in Boston. CIC provided a good foothold to start the operation, but now a permanent home is in the cards according to Tyler George.
From the Boston Business Journal:
“We wanted to start at the CIC where we could integrate ourselves with a lot of really forward-thinking businesses in Kendall Square and Cambridge, but we wanted to have a permanent office to continue to grow our staff and have in-person support for our drivers,” [Lyft’s Boston General Manager Tyler George] said in an interview.
“We want to be able to have a big enough space to hold events and parties for drivers and passengers,” he said. “It’ll be a significant piece of real estate.” Venture-backed Lyft was founded in 2012 and earlier this year landed another $1 billion from investors including General Motors Corp., valuing the company at $5.5 billion.
70 Franklin St.
Office trades continue with the sale of 175 Federal Street and 70 Franklin Street to Deka Immobilien Investment GmbH’s of Germany in excess of $177 million.
According to multiple sources, Deka Immobilien has been tabbed as winning bidder on both assets, committing in excess of $135 million for 175 Federal St. and more than $42 million to secure the Franklin Street property which dates to 1910. The German-based sponsor of several open-end real estate funds buying on a global basis and with assets in the Northeast “definitely” has 175 Federal St. under agreement, one source insists, a notion supported by others, and the same entity has been named winning bidder for 70 Franklin St., multiple sources further maintain.
More information on both properties is available on The Real Reporter.
Additional Property Information
175 Federal Street office space
70 Franklin Street offices for lease
Credit: BBJ
Midwood is on the move with a 59-story office tower in Downtown Crossing (DTX) which would surpass Millennium in height. The building would be a combination of residential and retail space.
According to an article on the BBJ, “Midwood originally proposed a 28-story tower on the site in 2008, but the project stalled due to the economic crash…The current iteration of the project is substantially larger than the original proposal. An architectural presentation Midwood will give at the city this week presents plans for a 419-unit, 59-story residential building spanning 605,000 square feet.”
You can more on the DTX tower on the BBJ.
The migration from “Me Space” to “We Space” will continue as employers accommodate flex time and independent working. At PwC the North American worker had 176 less personal pace in 2012 versus 2010.
Credit: FastCompany
According to a recent article on FastCompany.com, “Companies like WeWork, which offers small offices within a shared community of workers on a monthly basis and recently raised funding at a $16 billion valuation, have helped building owners adapt as the renting of vast swaths of cubicle farms in three- or five-year increments falls out of style. But as these real estate developers have watched WeWork rise, they’re looking for ways to more directly tap into the trends that have made the company so successful. “When you look at the growth of, for example, the coworking companies, it’s clear that long-term leases with little flexibility are probably not entirely the way of the future,” says Deborah Boyer, EVP and director of asset management for the SWIG Company, which owns almost 9 million square feet of real estate. Some real estate companies have developed their own prebuilt spaces to accommodate growing companies. Others have partnered with WeWork to design entire buildings with a new type of work in mind.”
You can read the full article on Fast Company’s website.
Credit: Boston.com
Soft phone or tethered is a question that many new employees get on their first day on the job. The notion that today’s employee can operate effectively without defined hard space in the office is foreign to previous generations. The worker today might be employed by a company that exists in co-working space or by a company with an open seating plan.
What is your preferred work space?
From Boston.com:
A new Global Workplace Report by office furniture company Steelcase cited in a Boston.com article, which surveyed over 12,000 office workers in 17 countries, asked employees a variety of questions about how office space design affected their engagement with their work. Steelcase found that when it comes to technology updates and work environments, most companies are a long way off from having the office of the future…86 percent of workers said they had landline phones, and 80 percent had desktop computers.
As for office layout, only 23 percent of employees said their company had an open floor plan. Much more common were workspaces with a combination of open floor plan and individual offices, at 46 percent, while 31 percent of workers said their workplace only had individual offices.
You can read more on the Workplace report on Boston.com.
Credit: Boston Herald
The use of light as art with bridges as a canvas have become the mainstay of nightlife in our cities. The Bay Bridge lighting designed by Leo Villareal is a captivating light show over the Bay. I look forward to what is in store for Congress Street.
Some of my other favorites are from the London Olympics:
Credit: Jenikya.com
Credit: jenikya.com