Author Archives: Wil Catlin

0 April Fools: Corporate Edition

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Boston mad men office design for april fools

Credit: The Boston Globe

April fools isn’t only for the water sprayer at the kitchen sink.  Some of the team at Endeavour Partners in Kendall Square were taken back when they arrived at their office on April 1st.

According to The Boston Globe, an elaborate April Fools’ Day prank was achieved by the office assistants and company chief executive Michael A.M. Davies; “more than a dozen computers and phones were replaced by typewriters, notepads, and rotary phones. Old records and copies of Life magazine were placed around the office, along with a bottle of whiskey for good measure…Neel Desai, an associate consultant, said the gag was indicative of the office culture at the company.”

You can read more about the ruse on The Boston Globe.

0 Epstein’s Instructive Strategy for Transforming Downtown Boston

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Bob Epstein

Credit: bisnow

Bob Epstein can teach us a few things about remaking duds into destinations.  Lafayette Center was that dud that wasn’t getting any airtime from prospective tenants, despite location, large floor plates and infrastructure.

“At Lafayette City Center, they also saw a property with ‘good bones and upside potential. It has high, 14-foot to 17-foot ceilings, expansive column spacing of 30 feet by 36 feet and big windows. As the downtown vacancy rate falls, rents are rising but Downtown Crossing is reasonably priced, Tom tells us. Its rents in the high $30s/SF to $40s/SF compare well to Back Bay rents in the $50s/SF and Cambridge hitting the $60s/SF. Downtown Crossing is still a value play. But back in 2002, Abbey Group saw that it—like Fenway in the ‘90s and Back Bay in the ‘70s—was undervalued,” according to a Bisnow editorial.

The full Bisnow article is available on its website.

0 ParkBoston: Mobile Payment App for Downtown Parking

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ParkBoston: Mobile Parking App for Downtown Boston and Cambridge

Credit: BBJ

No change no problem according to Boston City Hall.  Paying for parking at one of 8,000 app friendly meters has arrived in Boston.  Visit ParkBoston to learn how.

From the Boston Business Journal:

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh on Wednesday announced the expansion of the ParkBoston app to include all of Boston’s more than 8,000 parking meters. The program had been tested in a portion of the Back Bay for the past couple of months…The app allows drivers to remotely pay a meter with their mobile phone, avoiding the hassle of finding quarters or running back to the meter to add more time before it expires. The ParkBoston app has been downloaded over 15,000 times and has been used in over 12,000 parking transactions, according to the city.

 

0 50 Post Office Square in Boston Hits the Market

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50 Post Office Square Boston

Credit: The Real Reporter

50 Post Office Square is coming to market and could reap $300 million.  The building last traded for $192 million ($245.43/SF) on 9/29/08.  The new sales number would put this at $383.48/SF.  The current ownership has done a remarkable job not only repositioning the asset, but leasing it up as well.  Of the 782,304 total square feet there is only 118,500 square feet available on the 5th and 6th floors.

From the Real Reporter:

Besides the current investment climate that has Boston among the most popular destinations for institutional and foreign capital, observers claim the move is likely a combination of the natural life cycle of the landlord’s tenure in the property that began in Oct. 2008 when the 600,000-sf structure was acquired for $192 million with partner Commonwealth Ventures. “They figure this is the right time to do it,” says the source who praises Bentall and CV for repositioning an Art Deco building dating to 1948 that was badly in need of an overhaul when the asset previously known as 185 Franklin St. was offered up for sale by Verizon.

0 Parking App Gains Traction in Boston

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Parking App

Credit: Boston Business Journal

Parking in Boston: we need and it and it can be hard to find and expensive.  Spot Park puts private parking space owners in touch with those looking to rent them and charges a 15% fee.  Boston has been the pilot city and having just raised under $1M Spot Park will be expanding to 7 other U.S. cities.

Founder and CEO Braden Golub notes in the Boston Business Journal that Spot Park “‘now has 14,000 Boston users…this is a perfect test market for us, because Boston is notoriously difficult to find parking in,’ Golub said in an interview. ‘We think if we can make it work here, we can make it work in other cities’…Through its mobile app, the company allows drivers to book and pay for hundreds of Boston-area parking spots available from homeowners and apartment-renters. Spot Park takes a 15 percent cut off of every transaction.”

You can read the full article on the BBJ, here.

0 Amazon Hiring for Echo in Cambridge

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Amazon Echo

Credit: Boston Business Journal

Job openings are abundant at Amazon’s Echo in Cambridge at 101 Main Street in the Kendall Square.  Echo is a wireless gadget that doubles as a speaker and voice prompted remote control.

According to a BBJ article, “Amazon has an entire floor in its Kendall Square office dedicated to teams working on the Echo. The company has leased six floors at its 101 Main St. office in Cambridge with enough room for up to 800 employees.”

101 Cambridge Street is a 341,830 square foot 18 story building owned by RREEF.  Some of the tenants according to CoStar include:

  • Amazon
  • Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
  • CIC
  • CRICO Strategies
  • Endeca Technologies, Inc.
  • Computers/Data Processing
  • Amazon.com
  • Clarus Ventures
  • Matrix Partners
  • Lantos Technologies
  • Cambridge Consultants Inc.
  • Personal Services
  • Genentech
  • TiE Boston
  • Cafe on Main
  • Nextcode Health Usa, Inc
  • Park Square Execuitve Search, Llc
  • Capstone Financial Services
  • BP America Inc.
  • Quanticate Inc.
  • Gecko Health Innovations, Inc.
  • BioMed Realty Trust
  • Endeavour Partners Llc
  • Kinalco Inc.
  • Tatte Bakery & Cafe
  • Withings Inc.
  • Corporate Chefs
  • Cambridge Athletic Club Express
  • Matrix Capital Management Company Llc
  • Keryx Biopharmaceuticals
  • Cambridge Advisory To Family Enterprise
  • Lns Research

 

0 Boston Greenway will Influence Nearby Office Design

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Boston’s Greenway transcends the city’s current incarnation, and will continue to benefit from times gone by. Surrounding buildings will need to create access points to invite visitors to directly access the park and highlight the lush Greenway landscape.

North End Park Boston

Credit: Bostinno.Streetwise

Bostinno.Streetwise articulates how the city’s architecture can grow to accentuate the Greenway in the coming years:

This beautiful Greenway carved through the heart of downtown Boston, building owners, architects and developers should really be thinking about repositioning the front of their buildings toward the “center.” If you walk down the 1.5-acre strip, you will notice that many of the buildings’ entrances are facing opposite the park toward the dark “maze of streets,” limiting options for retail, hospitality and ultimately commerce along this central corridor.

If we turned these buildings around, similar to what happened in P.O. Square and the projects we completed there, the 1 P.O. Square and 225 Franklin Street lobbies, the Greenway could serve as a grassy green extension of our workplace’s front porch.

You can read the full editorial on Bostinno.Streetwise.co.

0 Congress Square Project Grows Retail in Boston Financial District

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Congress Sq. retail space in Boston financial district

Credit: BBJ

Related Beal’s Congress Square project will bring “The Block” back to the street.”  This will add a great street scape of retailers to the Congress and State Street interesting section of the Financial District.

Coverage on the BBJ notes, “the mixed-use project will include renovated offices, the addition of ground-floor retail and restaurant space, residential units and a boutique hotel. It’s knit together by a reinvigorated Quaker Lane — currently a rather dark back alley — into what Related Beal hopes will be a destination retail and nightlife location, as well as an improved Washington Street retail corridor.”

More information on the  mixed-use redevelopment project is available on bizjournals.com.

0 10 High Street is home to new food venue, Serafina

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Serafina Boston

Credit: Boston.Eater

New food venue, Serafina, is destined for High Street in Boston. 10 High Street is an 88,000 square foot building with 11 stories.  The building is owned by Farley White Interests LLC which is a regional landlord which is also headquartered at 10 High Street.  Typical foor size is 7,051 square feet and was built in 1917 and renovated in 1988.  According to CoStar some of the tenant incude:

  • New England College of Business and Finance
  • Urbelis & Fieldsteel, LLP
  • Starpoint Solutions
  • Savings Bank of Maine Inc
  • BBIX

You can read more about the new Serafina on High Street on Boston.eater.com.

0 Boston Developers Contending for Financial District Tower

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new Boston office tower financial district

Rendering of Accordia Partners’ proposed tower. Credit: Boston Globe

The shuttered garage that falls between Devonshire and Federal Street in the core of Boston’s Financial District shines brightly as an opportunity for eight suitors to make their mark on the Boston Skyline.  Tenants in recent quarters have flocked Downtown to take advantage of value rents and infrastructure driving office vacancy down to 10 percent.

The Boston Globe details the eight developers “have filed proposals for a skyscraper, several of which would be nearly as tall as the city’s largest, the Hancock Tower, on the site of a city-owned parking garage that is now closed. The competitors include a who’s who of local and national developers, a measure of how strong Boston’s real estate market has become…If approved, the Winthrop Square project would add another tower to the fast-changing Boston skyline. Already, five towers over 600 feet are proposed or are being built while other large complexes are under development downtown.”

You can read the full article on the Globe website