0 Boston Office Rents up 7.6%

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 Office Design Mirrors Culture, Approach for Modern Start-ups

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.’

0 Cambridge Office Rents Continue to Climb

Boston from Cambridge over redline T

Credit: Banker and Tradesman

The torch gets passed to Kendall Square with office rents in Cambridge skyrocketing, and one market expected to climb even higher. Kendall is the spot to be for blue chip tech companies, but why – is it the view of the Boston Skyline?  No, simply put it’s Harvard and MIT that are the attraction. Companies want to attract top talent and want to associate with these prestigious institutions any way they can.

Banker and Tradesman is reporting “building owners in the lab- and office-packed Cambridge neighborhood [of Kendall Square] are quoting $80 a square foot for prime space…[while] the vacancy rate for office space in the Cambridge neighborhood is a practically air-tight 0.6 percent.”

More information on the demand trends of Kendall Square office space is available on B&T’s website.

0 Kendall Square Open Space and Design Competition Announces Finalists

Connect Kendall Square open space and design competition logoHow 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.

 

0 Kendall Square Office and Lab Space in High Demand

office space on binney street in east cambridge

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.

0 Cambridge Offices for Tech Giants Compared

Kendall Square Office space in cambridge for twitter

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.