How does your open space rank amongst your peers in East Cambridge/Kendall? Interested in learning more, come to the open forum.
“The competition, sponsored by the City’s Community Development Department, is an opportunity to plan a vision for the entire open space network in Kendall Square and eastern Cambridge and vicinity. The city is looking for unique approaches to open space planning and design,” notes WickedLocal.
You can read more about the competition at www.ConnectKendallSquare.com.
Office Building in Demand: 121 High Street in Boston’s financial district (click for property details)
Today there are fewer options for office tenants to occupy, along with with increased office rents. Combine this with additional tenant improvement dollars that have been pushed downward, and free rent has become obsolete. What does that mean? We are in the midst of a landlord market.
From The Boston Globe:
“Strong growth of technology and financial companies is increasing office rents across the region and fueling proposals for new office buildings from Route 128 to Cambridge and downtown Boston…In Boston, rents for top-rated space ticked up to $51.79. That represents only a slight increase from last year, but several large companies have recently committed to leasing new space in the city, including Natixis Global Asset Management and Sonos Inc., a wireless speaker maker.”
“’A lot of younger workers want to be in the city, and that’s very clearly driving companies’ decisions,’ said Bob Richards, a partner at Transwestern RBJ. ‘That trend is definitely deepening.’”
Office building at 30 John F Kennedy Boulevard, Cambridge
The greater Boston market is strong for tech jobs and VC funding into tech company. When clients as why the rapid rent growth from 2010 to now? Supply and demand to the absorption by venture backed tech companies.
According to a report in the Boston Business Journal, “Boston with its more than 145,000 tech jobs trails only Silicon Valley in terms of total high-tech employment, noting that Greater Boston experienced a 4.3 percent growth in high-tech jobs over the year. Silicon Valley had year-over-year tech-related job growth of 5.2 percent and employed a little over 213,000 people in the industry, the report noted. But the results aren’t much of a change from last year’s report, which stated that the Boston area was No. 2 in terms of tech jobs and No. 4 in venture funding…The Boston area also scored big in venture funding during the second quarter of this year, accumulating a total of $441.6 million in funding during the time period, according to the report. San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Manhattan all snagged more venture capital funding than the Boston area.”
The full article is available on the BBJ website.
Credit: BBJ
We all look up and see new office towers in Boston and an abundance of high-priced commercial real-estate, but what are they taxed for all of that luxurious space? According to the BBJ, “the city’s commercial tax rate is $31.18 per $1,000 of assessed value, down from $31.96 last year. For fiscal year 2014, which ended June 30, the city collected $1.1 billion in commercial tax levies. The assessed value of a property does not always reflect the actual value since the data is lagging. For example, One Beacon, the 34-story tower at the edge of the Financial District, recently sold for $561.5 million, but is assessed at $341 million.”
A slide show exhibiting Boston highest-taxed buildings is available on the BBJ, here.
East Cambridge lab space continues to be sought over by some heavyweights in the life sciences. The BBJ is reporting that “Bristol-Myers Squibb is on the hunt for up to 200,000 square feet of office and lab space in Cambridge, the latest major life sciences firm to crowd into one of the hottest commercial real estate markets in the country…the New York-based pharmaceutical giant, which already occupies 60,000 square feet of space in Waltham as well as 400,000 square feet in Devens, is targeting new research and administrative space in East Cambridge’s Kendall Square neighborhood, home to some of the biggest drug and technology developers in the world.”
Additional details are available on the Boston Business Journal
Credit: BBJ
East Cambridge is host to some of the best know pharma and tech companies. Lab space has become a very limited commodity and Amgen is in the hunt for 150k RSF. According to CoStar the lab vacancy rate among the 17 buildings is 7.1 percent on a direct basis or 17.3 percent including sublets.
The BBJ puts the competitive Kendall Square real estate market in perspective:
The East Cambridge office and research market includes only 6.4 million square feet — meaning…three deals alone could lock up about 10 percent of the neighborhood’s entire inventory when all is said and done. The activity, along with strong leasing among major information-technology players, is fueling a pricing surge in East Cambridge that has seen average annual rents surpass $58 per square foot, by far the highest in the region and among the highest for any neighborhood in the country, according to market data provided by Cassidy Turley in Boston.
The full article is available on the Boston Business Journal, here.
Credit: Boston Herald
Where would you rather work? Google, Microsoft or Amazon. Have a look at the benefits each has in the Kendall office in East Cambridge.
Xconomy.com has provided an office space comparison of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon’s Kendall Square office space. The articles notes, “just about every West Coast tech company worth its salt has established a branch office in the [Kendall Square] neighborhood. But some are larger than others: the Twitter, Facebook, and Apple outposts remain relatively small, while Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have all established large footprints.”
For more specifics on the tech companies Cambridge offices, jump over to coverage on Xconomy.com.
Credit: BetaBoston
“Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and with that, their new office in Cambridge inspire. The following are the 10 items about Google philosophy, and some things to think about as you type in your next query:
1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.
Credit: BetaBoston
Betaboston offers a report on the opening of Google’s new Cambridge offices:
“Google opened up its new offices in Cambridge today which connects three Cambridge Centers into one expansive campus sitting above Kendall Square. The key space in the complex is the (somewhat controversial) “Connector” built across the once fully public rooftop garden between Four and Five Cambridge Center.”
Credit: BBJ/bizjournals
The price of office space in the Boston Market continue to ratchet up and squeeze out those who signed their lease in the recent downturn. Rents in Kendall Sq. have continued to climb due to limited supply and large national tech firms wanting to be there. Small firms are finding opportunities a couple of stops away on the Red Line’s Downtown Crossing stop, where the Class B market is pricing in the low to mid $30’s PSF.
A report in the Boston Business Journal offers some quantification for the pace of office space transactions in Cambridge and Kendall Square, noting “data from Cassidy Turley reveals that 323,135 square feet of space was absorbed in Cambridge’s already tight office market between Jan. 1 and June 30, while average rents in the life sciences and technology hub increased by 14 percent on a year-over-year basis…according to the report, office availability in Cambridge fell to 10.5 percent in the second quarter while average rents rose to $50.33 per square foot, up from about $44 a year earlier. The city’s office market is comprised of approximately 10 million square feet of leasable space.”
You can read the full article on the BBJ’s website, Bizjournals.
Credit: Comcast
For small tenants the cost of reliable internet service is a must. Companies that fall into a small to mid-sized footprint in most cases are unwilling to use a fiber connection, but would prefer a business class product from Comcast. No all buildings are equal; meaning some have Comcast Business Class where the building next store might not. Why is that, if one has it shouldn’t they all? Well no, Comcast will install their service into a building if they can get enough subscribers, if not, they will charge to install it. Most landlords are unwilling to burden the installation costs and as a result the building stays dark from Comcast.
Well, now you can quickly check if Comcast services the building your are interested in move your office to at:
http://business.comcast.com/service-availability/check-availability