Category Archives: Co-working office space

0 Boston Commercial Real Estate Retrospective

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Boston office buildings line the skyline

Credit: The Boston Globe

The city of Boston that is home to a wide variety of college, universities, professional sports team, hospitals and companies is changing.  We have created the Back Bay, built office tower and now adding more buildings to our skyline.  No longer are the tower views home to companies, but residences.

The Boston Globe has put together a retrospective, “A new age for an old town”, tracing the Hub’s commercial transformation. The article notes the following:

Today, Boston Properties, one of the city’s most prolific builders, is developing a 17-story office building on the final parcel within the Prudential complex. Meanwhile, the area around the Pru is exploding with new projects and proposals for hotels and towering residential buildings.

“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Bob Richards, a partner at Transwestern RBJ. “What’s driving it is the top-tier labor talent in industries like technology and life sciences. The young people who work for those companies want to live in an urban environment.”

Not coincidentally, the city’s population is rising more rapidly than it has in decades. The total head count rose by nearly 30,000 people, to about 646,000, between 2010 and 2013, according to the US Census Bureau. That’s more population growth in three years than Boston experienced in the 1980s and ’90s combined.

0 Boston Tech Companies Present Personality

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Does your office look like a maze of cubicles, bench seating or that of today’s tech firms?  See how Carbonite has extended their brand onto their walls and doors at their new location?

A Boston Globe article Welcome to the new world of downtown office spaces. As tech firms have migrated into the staid Financial District and nearby environs during the past five years, they’ve done their best to put their unique stamps on work spaces. Goodbye, wood paneling. Hello, Yoda…Their offices have, essentially, become extensions of their brands — physical manifestations of how they view the world, and how they want the world to view them.

You can read the article on the Globe’s website.

 

0 New Boston Design Center Showrooms Open

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Boston design center in seaport

Credit: B&T

After completing $13 million in renovations, Jamestown is proud to announce some new tenants in the Design Center.

From Banker & Tradesman:

Jamestown, a real estate investment and development company headquartered in Atlanta, leases the 550,000-square-foot complex in the 1.4-million-square-foot Innovation and Design Building complex from the city of Boston. The complex contains 550,000 square feet dedicated to luxury home furnishing showrooms along with office and innovation space...Jamestown recently completed more than $13 million in interior renovations at the center, the first major physical updates since it opened in 1985. The project included renovations of the lobby, common spaces and seminar room and new finishes and furniture from design center tenants.

0 Boston Tops US in CMBS Loans

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745 Boylston Street office building in Boston

Office Building at 745 Boylston Street in Copley Sq.

Boston leads New York, D.C., Chicago and L.A. not only in the bid for the 2024 Olympics, but also for CMBS loans.

The Boston Business Journal is reporting the “percentage of Boston-area commercial mortgage backed security real estate loans with late payments is its lowest in months and is among the best in the country, according to new data from real estate information provider Trepp,,,According to Trepp, 2.84 percent of Boston-area CMBS loans were 30 days delinquent or more as of the end of November. A year ago, the rate was 4.02 percent. The decline has been more or less steady, with slight increases a few months…The Boston-area compares especially well with other major U.S markets.

You can find more information on the BBJ’s website.

 

0 Co-Working Office Space Coalition Opens in Downtown Crossing

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co-working coalition in downtown crossing Boston

Credit: Bostinno.Streetwise.co

Coalition is the latest to enter the shared workspace environment, opening in Downtown Crossing at 101 Arch Street.

Coalition opened in Boston’s Downtown Crossing neighborhood in February. “The setting is no doubt part of Coalition’s charm. At 101 Arch St., the 7,060-square-foot office boasts a fantastic view over The Hub and no shortage of restaurants and bars nearby for post-work winding down. (The area has also attracted collaborative working spaces in the area including WeWork, Techstars and even CIC Boston/Space with a Soul.),” according to an article on Bostinno.Streetwise.co. “Coalition aims to differentiate by partnering with MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge and other similar organizations to give young entrepreneurs the chance to work with seasoned local professionals. It’s a pretty impressive community, too, with venture capital and private equity investors and veteran entrepreneurs (with two to four founded firms under their belts) alike.”

Follow the link to read the complete Bostinno.Streetwise.co article.

 

0 Co-working Office Space Remains an Active Market: WeWork Valued at $6B

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WeWork clearly has identified a market for growth within the co-working office environment. With locations from Israel to Seattle, WeWork is on the move with a mission “to create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living.”

co-working office space in Cambridge at WeWork

Credit: Bisnow

A BisNow article states WeWork is “on the verge of closing a $300M to $600M financing round that could value the shared workspace provider at a whopping $6B. The start-up hit 1.5B in market value last month after securing $150M and suggesting that the next round would kick off in 2015.”

Additional information is provided by Bisnow on it’s website, here.

 

0 Cambridge Innovation Center at 15 Years Old

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One Broadway street CIC

Credit: Boston.About.com

Creating a community for innovators to innovate might be one of the most valuable innovations in Boston. Yes, the deals that are brought to market through CIC are what the VC’s are looking for, but without Tom Rowe’s platform — the Cambridge Innovation Center — some of these ideas may have been kept on the shelf and not made it to market.

A Boston Globe article offers some insight on CIC’s direction for the future:

“In April, [founder, Tim Rowe] opened the CIC Boston, a 60,000-square-foot shared office space downtown, and it has been just a few weeks since he opened CIC St. Louis, his first out-of-state venture and the largest startup space that is not on the East or West coast. Rowe was keen to cozy up to the Midwestern city’s startup scene: He saw promise in Washington University’s health care colossus and was tickled when Boeing opened offices in the 120,000-square-foot space — one of its first occupants. Lately, he has been shuttling to and from the Netherlands as he looks to take CIC global.”

Additional details and photos from the CIC’s 15th anniversary, are available on the Globe’s website.

0 Looking for Coworking Office Space in Back Bay?

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shared office space in Boston's back bay

Credit: The Metro

Not ready for prime time space, but ready to get out of the garage?  The Back Bay submarket appeals to a wide variety of firms for a number of reasons. Access to transportation, an educated vast work force, and a large concentration of employers in a small area all contribute to this submarket’s popularity among Boston office space users.

In an interview with the Metro, Oficio co-founder and managing partner Nima Yadollahpour notes, “because an entrepreneur needs less to run a business (a laptop and cell phone), it only makes sense to keep their overhead low, and using a shared co-working or office space is the perfect answer to that…It’s economical, efficient and communal.”

Prominent Coworking Office Space in Back Bay Boston:

Oficio
30 Newbury St. 3rd Floor
or
129 Newbury St. 4th Floor

Idea Space
867 Boylston St., 5th Floor

LearnLaunch
31 St James Ave. #920

Unfamiliar with the area? Read our submarket page to learn more about Back Bay Office Space.

0 Inventive Labs: Incubator space for Entrepreneurs

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Incubator InventiveLabs

Credit: InventiveLabs

Do you follow a less traditional path?  Sitting in a cube not your thing after getting a four year degree?  Inventive Labs is like the co-working space for the entrepreneur.

The BBJ notes, “InventiveLabs leases a 10,000 square-foot space in an old brick building in the up-and-coming town of Amesbury, about 30 miles north of Boston…With two fully stocked kitchens, three custom work labs, a lounge area, special rooms designated for sleep and study, along with a gaming room and a large open space (which will be the incubator once it gets up and running), one could practically live at the facility, which is accessible around the clock.”

More information on InventiveLabs is available on the company’s website, or you can read the Boston Business Journal article.

0 Cambridge Startup Launches new IM for Workplace Collaboration

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Collaboration seems to be a key driver for employers both large and small.  Some companies are trying to figure out the best way/product that could be the key for maximizes efficiencies in the workplace.

New messenger and professional network for worker collaboration

Credit: BBJ

The Boston Business Journal notes that Chookka, “a Cambridge company that allows people to chat with each other and send files…officially launched in September. The service is currently in beta mode and hopes to get to 10,000 users “fairly quickly,” said Chookka co-founder Yves Schabes…The goal, Schabes said, is not to replace email, but complement it — especially when groups of people are trying to communicate.”

Additional information on Chookka’s collaborative product is available on the BBJ’s website.