Category Archives: Commercial Real Estate Cambridge

0 Empty store space in Downtown Crossing may become offices

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Does the Amazon effect play into retail vacancy in Boston?  We, in short yes.  How we shop and what we shop for online has changed and will continue to do so.  Retail is still vibrant and strong, but not all retail spaces are created equal.  Some historical retails spaces are better suited for office which in part has to do their size and proximity to public transit.

An example of this transformation is the Cambridge Side Galleria Mall in the East Cambridge.  The red hot Kendal office and lab market will continue to gobble up under performing assets.

An empty storefront near 560 Washington St.

By Tim Logan GLOBE STAFF  APRIL 12, 2019

One of the biggest retail spaces in Downtown Crossing may soon become home to offices.

The Boston Planning & Development Agency on Thursday approved plans by the owner of Lafayette City Center to convert much of its long-empty ground floor into office space, perhaps to house the state agency that handles workers’ compensation claims.

The move by veteran Boston developers The Abbey Group highlights the soft market for large-format retailers as they face mounting online competition. The change also has something to do with the particular quirks of the building, which was built in the 1980s as the inward-facing Lafayette Place Mall before being repositioned as storefronts with office space above.

The proposed change also is raising concerns in some quarters about a block and a half of Washington Street in the busy shopping district being converted to office space.

Much of the building’s ground floor — about 75,000 square feet — has been empty for at least 15 years. The last sizable tenant, an Eddie Bauer outlet store, closed in early 2016. Abbey and its brokers have struggled to fill the space. Among other challenges, the first floor is as much as 7 feet higher than street level in places — a design quirk of the old indoor mall and its underground garage.

“We think of ourselves as creative developers who apply innovative thinking to problems like this,” Abbey chief operating officer David Epstein said. “It simply isn’t feasible” to use the space for retail, he said.

 

But Abbey has leased more than 500,000 square feet of office space on the floors above street level, mostly to tech companies. When the state began looking for 33,700 square feet to house its Division of Industrial Accidents — which needs to move out of the Government Center Garage ahead of a redevelopment there — Abbey offered up the ground floor.

A spokesman for the state’s real estate agency said it received five proposals for the office, including Lafayette Center. A final decision has not been made, he said.

Workers’ compensation courtrooms may not be the sort of retail and restaurant Downtown Crossing is known for, but it fits with other legal offices around the neighborhood, said Rosemarie Sansone, president of the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District.

“This place has been empty for 20 years,” she said. “They found an unusual and interesting use for it. This is all good.”

Still, the shift comes as several key locations sit empty along Washington Street, from Lafayette Center to the long-shuttered Barnes & Noble (which is now being renovated by a new owner) to a cluster of empty storefronts at Washington and Bromfield streets that have been largely dark since plans to build a skyscraper there stalled in 2016.

Sansone acknowledged the empty buildings but also noted that several restaurants and stores have opened in and around Downtown Crossing in recent years. Building owners and the BID, she said, are aiming to bring in more retailers to cater to residents and workers who fill nearby office towers, including a day care center, pet stores, and more home goods stores. She also said Trader Joe’s is considering opening a grocery store in the neighborhood, though a Trader Joe’s spokeswoman would not confirm that.

 

Some landlords on Washington Street, Sansone said, are being patient, waiting for the right tenant.

“There have been some deliberate attempts to make sure that whatever comes is going to be successful, that it’s what people want,” she said.

One BPDA board member Thursday asked Epstein about the wisdom of leaving retail space like Lafayette Center vacant for years, especially given the effect on foot traffic for neighboring businesses.

“It’s a form of job destruction,” Carol Downs said. “I don’t really understand why this space was let to stay empty for so long.”

Epstein said the market has shifted away from the larger-format retailers it originally envisioned would lease at Lafayette City Center, and the technical challenges of opening in the building were too great for smaller stores. Filling two-thirds of the long empty storefront with office workers will bring foot traffic and, he hopes, will make it easier to rent the rest of the vacant space.

“We’re excited about the prospect,” Epstein said.

Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.

0 Commercial Office Markets to Watch in 2018

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Office towers in Boston

Credit: Commercial Cafe

Boston has strong fundamentals and looks for increased rent growth in 2018.

Here’s a 2017 Assessment from Commercial Cafe:

Boston averaged between 11% and 12% office vacancy in 2017. Desirable tech submarkets are priced at a premium here, while emerging submarkets often offer discounts–the overall average asking rent in tech submarkets is priced at a 16% premium in East Cambridge (where inventory has decreased).

The Boston market also retained positive absorption, as vacancy dropped 0.4 percentage points to 12.0 percent last year. Large tenant move-ins have driven the 2017 Boston CBD market, with major shifts including Natixis Global Asset Management’s move into its new 150,000-square-foot headquarters at 888 Boylston St. in the Back Bay.

0 What 10M Driverless Cars by 2020 Means for Real Estate Development

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Driverless car rendering

Credit: TheRealReporter

Boston will change significantly with the introduction of driverless cars. Do you expect to own a Level 4 driverless car in the next 10 years?

According to The Real Reporter, “Level 4 cars park themselves, they don’t need nearly the space for error as humans do, and don’t need space for passengers to exit from the sides. As landlords’ see their tenants’ workers go increasingly autonomous, it may make sense to proactively create areas or structures to more efficiently offer car storage than the traditional 150 space per acre parking lot…The autonomous revolution may quickly lead to a car-share model. This could rapidly change industry parking ratios –freeing land, in some cases, for more development!”

You can read more on the real estate impact of driverless cars on The Real Reporter, here.

0 Boston Office Rents Hit Decade High

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Office space in Boston

Credit: Boston Business Journal

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts holds a few distinctions aside from high office rents and expensive homes; Massachusetts is the highest educated state, and as such, holds the potential to attract top talent.

According to the BBJ, “rents for large office space in Greater Boston hit their highest levels in at least a decade in the fourth quarter of 2015, with the vacancy rate dropping to its lowest level since 2007…The total vacancy rate fell to 13.8 percent from 14.3 percent the previous quarter.”

You can read the full article, here.

0 Prime Boston Office Rents Up Nearly 300% in Past 15 Years

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boston signage for office buildings

Credit: Boston Globe

The city of Boston continues to expand by building more residential and office buildings in areas once thought too far from the mainstream. Industrial and flex users have felt that impact along with office tenants that occupied old industrial buildings that have gone through complete renovations. $12 PSF office rents in the Boston Wharf portfolio from 15 years ago are now in the upper $40’s PSF.

From the Boston Globe:

Yet as real estate prices surge and development pushes into places that were long neglected, the pressures are rising on industrial space all over the city. Boston has just 3.6 square miles of land zoned for industrial use, less seemingly every week. Two prominent properties in the South End, for example, Quinzani’s Bakery on Harrison Avenue and the Flower Exchange on Albany Street, are being sold to developers.

“Not everybody works for Fidelity or Vertex,” said Michael Vaughan, a development consultant who is helping the food wholesalers in Widett Circle negotiate a potential move. “This is how people earn a good living and stay in the city of Boston. The challenge is how do you make sure there’s room for them in a very land-poor city.”

0 Boston High-Rise Office Space: Rents Exceeding $90 per sq. foot

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745 Atlantic Ave office space in Boston

Credit: Bizjournals.com

Boston office rents continue to grow as tenants continue to migrate to downtown Boston high-rise office buildings.

From the Boston Business Journal:

Low-rise and Class B offices are now commanding rents in the mid- to upper $40s range, while high-rise rents are reaching well past the $90 per square foot range, according to second-quarter research from commercial real estate services firm DTZ. Class B office rents are up 21 percent from last year in the Financial District, 12 percent in the North Station region and 20 percent in South Station, DTZ said.

“It’s also worth noting that nearly 25 percent of Boston’s office inventory has traded hands in the past 12 months,” the research report said.
Meanwhile, Cambridge also maintained its post as the strongest real estate market in Massachusetts, with $2.2 billion in sales activity. That’s more than half of the overall $4 billion in total sales volume so far this year, according to recently released second-quarter research from JLL..Direct average rents rose more than 5 percent year-over-year in nine out of 12 of Boston’s submarkets, topping out with 16.3 percent growth in East Cambridge.

0 Boston Office Rents up 7.6%

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1 broadway in kendall

One Broadway in Kendall Square (click for property details)

Fewer options exist on the Boston office market, and what is available is more expensive then previous quarters.  Combined with fewer concessions offered by landlords, local tenants are feeling the pinch.

From the Boston Globe:

Boston’s office market is hopping, according to reports issued by real estate brokerages Transwestern and Jones Lang LaSalle. Driven by strong employment gains and growing companies in need of additional space, rents are rising all across Greater Boston, up 7.6 percent in the last 12 months. Throughout Cambridge, there are just three vacant office spaces of 20,000 square feet or more on the market, and rents in Kendall Square are averaging above $70 per square foot. Along Route 128, vacancy rates are at record lows, while office rents along Interstate 495 are at seven-year highs.

0 Boston Office Forecast: Meaningful Moves Ahead in Financial Sector

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Boston financial district office buildings

Credit: B&T

The Boston office market has big movers that need to make some real estate decisions.  The market continues to tighten and blocks of 100,000 square feet and above are harder to find.

From Banker and Tradesman:

Banks continue to move employees into smaller workspaces, with the industry average now 150 square feet per employee, down from 225 square feet in 2009…many banks are [also] choosing to relocate offices. Only 25 percent of the financial services office deals tracked by JLL in 2014 were lease renewals, while 46 percent were relocations.

That trend is likely to continue in Boston, with three major financial institutions responsible for 33 percent of the total active requirements in the market. But the result likely will be a net decrease in occupied space.

Putnam Investments and Wells Fargo are in the market for 280,000 and 220,000 square feet, respectively, while BNY Mellon is seeking to downsize to 350,000 square feet. And available build-to-suit parcels in the Seaport District provide competition to existing office towers in the Financial District.

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 Office Design Mirrors Culture, Approach for Modern Start-ups

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Art in Facebook's Cambridge office space

Credit: The Boston Globe

What type of art does your office have?  The experience of today’s office differs greatly from what we saw just 10 years ago; today it exudes the company’s culture and vibe.

The Boston Globe recently published an article on the interior aesthetic and art marking Facebook’s Cambridge office:

The Kendall Square office of Facebook, which opened last year, includes five art pieces commissioned by the social media giant. Ryan Mack, who runs the local office for Facebook, oversaw the selection of art:

‘If you look at any of our offices, art’s an important part of our company culture. We try to find pieces that combine Facebook culture, which is about technology and connecting people, with the local culture. So we always get stuff from local artists…there are design elements that are consistent across all Facebook offices, but the art gives them a local touch. We put an artist statement up near each piece that tells a little story about the artist or how they designed that piece for the office.’