Category Archives: Boston office towers

0 1 Federal Street Goes up for Sale

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Financial district office building at 1 Federal st.

1 Federal Street in Boston’s Financial District

1 Federal Street is headed for the sales block by Eastdil Secured. The building is expected to trade in excess of $682 per square foot.

According to Realert, “the 38-story tower is 98% occupied, with a weighted average remaining lease term of almost seven years. The largest tenant, law firm Morgan Lewis, occupies 301,000 sf on a lease that runs until 2023. Records-management company Iron Mountain is leasing 133,000 sf until 2024. Others tenants include Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, Oppenheimer & Co. and U.S. Bank.”

Additional information is available on realert.

0 Boston Towers Still Short of Manhattan’s Scale

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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 Boston Office Tower Construction Surging

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back bay south end gateway

Credit: Banker&Tradesman

They all won’t happen in this cycle, but it will be interesting to watch the Boston skyline evolve as projects come out of the ground.

From Banker & Tradesman:

Three office towers totaling 113 stories and nearly 2.5 million square feet, already bearing the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s stamp of approval, are to be built near the MBTA’s Haymarket, North and South stations.

The transit tower trend ratchets up with Boston Properties’ latest vision of a 1.3-million-square-foot development at Back Bay station, including a 26-story office tower. And the BRA is getting into the high-rise act as it seeks an “iconic” redevelopment up to 700 feet for its defunct Financial District garage at 115 Federal St.

0 Downtown Crossing Office Tower would Trump Millennium

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One Bromfield office tower in Downtown crossing

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.

0 Boston Office Space Closes Out 2015 with Peak Rents

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office rent prices in Boston over the past few years

Credit: B&T

According to our research office rents will continue to grow through 2017 within the greater Boston market.  On top of that, construction costs continue to climb while tenant improvement dollar’s decline and rent abatement all but disappears.

From Banker & Tradesman:

Rents in Class A downtown office towers jumped 7.4 percent in 2015, with a nearly 4 percent jump in the last three months of the year, according to Lisa Strope, New England research director for JLL.

Leasing activity downtown leaped 18 percent during the fourth quarter.
The average rent for top-shelf office space in Boston ended 2015 at just under $61 a square foot, up from $52 at the end of 2013.

“Suddenly downtown is looking good to a lot of people,” Strope said.

0 Seaport ‘sausage parcel’ at 399 Congress sells for $36M

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The sausage parcel in the Seaport sells for $36M. Where is this?

Sausage Parcel site in Boston Seaport

Credit: BBJ

According to the BBJ, “the 0.7-acre site at 399 Congress St. in Boston’s Seaport District…is a long, thinly shaped site — almost like a link of sausage — that’s sandwiched between the confluence of East Service Road, Congress Street and what’s now Boston Wharf Road in the Seaport.

You can read more about the Sausage Parcel site at 399 Congress on the Boston Business Journal, here.

Related Commercial Listings
Seaport Office Space

0 Boston Office Market Maintains Impressive Growth

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Boston real estate Innovation

Credit: JLL

Office rents continue Northward while vacancy works Southward in Boston’s office Market.  We will continue to see rent growth through 2016 as tenants continue to demand more space.

According to Globest, “the strong job market is fueling tenant demand and positive space absorption in Boston and surrounding areas such as Cambridge and the Route 128 markets. The office vacancy rate for Greater Boston ended 2015 at 12.1%, virtually flat as compared to year’s-end 2014. The average vacancy rate for 2015 was 12.2%, the lowest rate since 2002. Class A asking rents in the region rose to $42.06-per-square-foot. Asking rents haven’t been that high since 2002, Transwestern reports.”

You can read the full article on its website.

0 Two Glass Skyscrapers Approved for Government Center Garage Site

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Glass office towers in Boston

Credit: Boston Globe

Government Center is schedule to make way to two glass towers would extend to 500 +/- feet tall.  One tower would be dedicated for residential while the second would be for office space.

“The construction will unfold in phases over the next five years or so. And when done, the whole complex — six buildings and 2.3 million square feet — would be one of the biggest developments to come out of Boston’s current building boom. Opening up that section of Congress Street and adding a large public space within the retail plaza will help reconnect some of the most historic pockets of the city,” a Boston Globe article notes.

“We’re going to see just how significant that parcel is. It’s at the intersection of the Bulfinch Triangle, the North End, Beacon Hill, and Government Center,” said George Thrush, an architecture professor at Northeastern University. “That garage has been a real barrier and now it won’t be.”

You can read the full Boston Globe article on its website: Government Center Garage Gets Final Approval.

0 ‘First’ Boston Office Skyscraper gets New Owner

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Ames building court street in Boston

Credit: Wikipedia

The Ames Building at 1 Court Street will be getting a new owner. The building is known as the Boston’s “first skyscraper”.

From Wikipedia:

The Ames Building is a skyscraper located in Boston, Massachusetts. It is sometimes ranked as the tallest building in Boston from its completion in 1893 until 1915, when the Custom House Tower was built. However, the building was never the tallest structure in Boston. The steeple of the Church of the Covenant, completed in 1867, was much taller than the Ames Building. Nevertheless, it is considered to be Boston’s first skyscraper.

Located at 1 Court Street and Washington Mall in downtown Boston, the Ames Building was designed by the architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge inRichardsonian Romanesque and paid for by Frederick L. Ames. It is the second tallest masonry load bearing-wall structure in the world, exceeded only by the Monadnock Building in Chicago, completed that same year.[2] It is thirteen stories high with a three-story granite base and sandstone and brick. The sandstone is from the Berea formation in Ohio and was supplied by Cleveland Quarries Company. Construction was completed in 1889, but interior work was not completed for occupancy until 1893. It became the corporate headquarters for the Ames families’ agricultural tool company.[3]

The Ames Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 26, 1974.

0 Boston Office Market Trends: 2010-2015

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If your company signed an office lease during the Great Recession chances are your rents are looking pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Office space in Boston is growing increasingly more expensive. So much so current asking rents are at some of the highest they have ever been. The top floors of the Prudential building are asking $90 per rentable square foot…$90!

Office trends in Boston and Cambridge

Boston Office Market Trends

The urban leasing team at Boston Realty Advisors wanted to know how much has changed in the last five years across all of Greater Boston’s major neighborhoods: East Cambridge, Seaport, Financial District, Back Bay, North Station. They included image break downs of each market on asking rental rates and vacancy rates for the top tier buildings (Class A) and the middle market buildings (Class B). The facts are astounding!

If your company’s lease is expiring in the next 12-24 months chances are the second fixed expense on your balance sheet next to payroll will be increasing  if you wish to renew. Now is the time to engage your real estate team on how the current market dynamics will impact the company’s short and long terms plans for office space, the company’s bottom line, and how your company uses its current space. Knowing the options, risks, and opportunities in the current real estate climate is the best hedge against a rising market. Its starts with being proactive. Time can be your best leverage but quickly your worst enemy when it is running out.

Robert LeClair is Managing Director and Partner at Boston Realty Advisors having handled hundreds of lease transactions for clients in Greater Boston for over the last 10yrs.

Click here to download the full PDF: Boston Office Market Trends 2010-2015