Why is Downtown Crossing (DTX) such a hot market? Price, access, infrastructure and vibe. Wanderu chose DTX over all other options in the city because it checked all 4 boxes.
Click over to watch the video on the Boston Business Journal.
Category Archives: Contemporary Office Space in Boston
0 What Makes for Cool Office Space in Boston?
Credit: The Boston Globe
Some of the creative spaces to work house some interesting amenities that would have been frowned-upon in the recent past. How we work and how we collaborate has evolved, and companies are trying to offer a creative and fun environment that can help their teams excel.
Cool features include:
· Hammock
· Beer tabs
· Standing desks
· IT vending machine
· Nap room
· Kitchens with large flat-screen TV’s
· Foosball
· Treadmill desks
· No assigned desks
· Wall displays of employees which is designed to make introductions
· Town hall styled meeting space
· Glass, glass and more glass for abundant natural light
A recent Boston Globe article on Boston’s “Cool Office Spaces at Top Places to Work“, notes “some of Top Places to Work winners have some excellent digs for their employees. Newer workspaces include beer on tap, flexible workstations, and even a nap room in one case.” The Globe article also includes a slideshow of Boston’s stylish office spaces to peruse.
0 Is Speculative Development Fit to Take Off in Boston?
Office building at 111 Huntington Avenue in Boston
The office market has clearly shifted from years past. We are seeing continued rent growth in all Boston office markets from Back Bay to the Seaport and Financial District. The time has arrived for speculative new office construction. Tenants are willing to pay for brand new construction that accommodates their culture and growth.
From Banker and Tradesman:
“’You’re hearing rumblings in the market about people starting to think about spec office development,’ said Carlos Febres-Mazzei, a senior vice president at CBRE/New England. Typically, speculative development takes off when vacancy rates fall to around 8 percent. With current construction costs, rents need to approach $70 a square foot to support ground-up development, said Febres-Mazzei said.”
0 ‘Cool Offices’ are Casual, Communal and Homey
The office look and feel is vastly different than 10 years ago. Gone are bland impersonal spaces, now we see cozy kitchens and complete gyms.
Credit: Boston.com
HubSpot recently garnered recognition for its office’s inviting, contemporary aesthetic. Its chief operating officer, JD Sherman, described the company’s motif, “we have standing desks for every employee, informal lounges to make it easy to collaborate, chalk walls for brainstorming, and a kitchen in each of the main areas to foster and encourage people to meet and connect throughout the day.”
You can read more on HubSpot’s cool office chic on Boston.com.
0 Collaborative Office Space Trending in Cambridge
Bring the walls down and let’s see and hear each other. That is the new norm is office space, gone are the vast array of private offices. Today’s office layout is vastly different than just 10 years ago; today’s employees can expect to work in a benching platform, sitting very close to their coworkers. Their work station would have very little is any actual storage space and in some case may not even have land line if the role of that person is non customer related. The big delta is common space, this looks more like a large family room.
Credit: Boston.com
In an interview with Boston.com, Swedish architect, Gert Wingårdh, said “his [newest] design is aimed at improving company communications, a problem many businesses identify with. ‘Usually our surveys tell us that communications is lacking all over the world,’ said Wingårdh. ‘When employees have the same space to share, it enhances their sense of one another.’ With no walls between workstations, Wingårdh says employees will become aware of each other. At EF, even the CEO works in an open workstation.”
0 Open Office Experiment in Boston Fosters Inclusion and Collaboration
Credit: Harvard Business Review/hbr.org
Looking for a new office? Thinking you simple want private offices because that’s what you have always had? Well, have a look at how that has changed for some companies.
According to the Harvard Business Review, a working ‘office experiment’ was carried out by The Bridgespan Group in its Back Bay offices, to determine what impact an open, shared workspace would have on employee collaboration and production. The HBR article includes the following:
At the end of our design lab, we handed off to our architects a “radical” plan which they built out over the next few months.
It included:
- an open café, where staff bump into each other making coffee, or making sandwiches and catch up or take care of business
- a “laboratory” space with tables, sofas and white boards at the heart of the office, where teams meet and discuss work previously done in closed conference rooms
- a large, closed-off library space with lots of natural light that we call the “quiet car,” where people can work without interruption
- several small comfortable seating clusters throughout the office for small-group conversations
- a bank of small private rooms for people to use when they truly need privacy for meetings, phone calls, or individual work–but no private offices even for the most senior staff
- sitting and standing work stations where people can park themselves day-to-day
- glass-walled conference rooms so most meetings are seen by everyone, even if they aren’t heard
- background noise masking, so that conversations in the open are heard as mild hubbub rather than distinct, distracting words
- lockers in which staff can keep personal items
Six months in, we continue to be amazed at how differently we work in the new space and how much the spirit of our office has changed. We used to make appointments to see each other; now, we often just run into each other, and all kinds of new ideas emerge from these unplanned collisions of two or three or four people….Formal meetings are routinely held in the open areas, where it’s easy to bring in someone else on the spur of the moment—just because they’re passing nearby, or sitting in view.
0 Boston Office Motif is Open and Shared
Credit: The Boston Globe
The look and feel of today’s office space is dramatically different than what we saw just 10 years ago. Collaborative is the new norm and private offices are a thing of the past. Gone is the bowling alley of offices replaced by open spaces with exposed ceilings.
Drawing a parallel between the modern workspace and online social behavior, the Boston Globe notes, “in a fast-paced high-tech world where community seems to be more valued than privacy, the office partitions have come down in the name of collaboration and quick exchange…Offices are being designed to offer slightly cramped but open spaces to create “collision zones” for employees, where conversations get started and ideas get hatched. Status-based work areas have gotten the pink slip as companies envision cross-departmental, even cross-industry alliances. And why have a meeting around a gigantic table when you and a few co-workers can set up shop in a booth — not so different from one at Denny’s. Sound much different from your office? Just wait.”
The Boston Globe article is comprehensive and worthy of a read; it’s available on the Globe’s online real estate section.
0 Boston Commercial Real Estate Trends towards Open Floor Plans and Collaborative Workspaces
Organizations are knocking down interior office walls faster than you can spell “collaboration.”
Boston Realty Advisors estimates more than 75% of tenants today are looking for open floor plans, as opposed to traditional layouts with closed-door offices and high-walled cubicles. The trend for open offices is giving fresh legs to a proven phenomenon. Many organizations site open floor plans as a core element to their company ethos and ultimately, a key reason for their success. Zappos, for example, credits its open floor plan as a critical element to establishing and maintaining its culture. From a few employees 15 years ago, to more than 1,500 today, Zappos has maintained its open floor plan throughout the company’s history.
The push to open floor plans isn’t just for employees and middle management. In fact, many CEOs are leading the charge. By placing themselves alongside the team, the benefits are clear: increased availability, greater transparency and a heightened awareness to company culture and communication. The tired corporate adage, “My door is always open,” pales in comparison to today’s mantra, “I don’t have a door to close.”
Wayfair, the Boston-based online home furnishings company, proudly describes its collaborative C-suite structure. “At Wayfair, there are no corner offices. In fact, there are no offices at all. We support an open, transparent workplace where leaders mentor the 1,600+ bright talents that sit among them – and visa versa.”
Another organization, The Bridgespan Group, detailed their journey from a traditional office environment to a new, open floor plan. Their tale serves as a playbook for organizations considering an open floor plan:
· Open café to bring colleagues together
· Laboratory space for teams to meet and brainstorm
· Library-like space for quiet work
· Comfortable seating areas for small-group meetings
· Private rooms for private conversations
· Sitting and standing work stations for day-to-day use
· Glass-walled conference rooms for full transparency
· Noise dampening techniques to muffle distinct words
· Lockers for personal items
So, get out that sledgehammer and start creating a vision for a collaborative work environment.
Alternatively, follow the link to our property pages to view available Boston Commercial Real Estate.
0 Modern Office Space Meets Need for Speed
Credit: Cisco
Before signing a multi-year office lease, tenants run through a list of questions to ensure the space is “future ready,” meaning it works for their team today, and will still work tomorrow. Will our team fit here in three years? Do we have room to grow? Will our next wave of employees want to work in this part of town? Can they get here easily?
Now, there’s a new question to add: Will it be fast enough?
According to a new research report from Cisco, Internet traffic will increase nearly three-fold within the next five years due to more users and devices, faster Internet speeds, and an increase of video viewing.
Companies of all shapes and sizes, from startups to Fortune 500s, will be part of this Internet evolution. The best companies will be the ones that plan for the future. The report predicts that annual Internet traffic for the year 2018 alone will be greater than all traffic that has been generated globally from 1984 to 2013 combined.
The report also says that by 2018 global broadband speeds will reach 42 Mbps, up from 16 Mbps by the end of 2013; more advanced regions may have average speeds approaching 100 Mbps by 2018. In addition to the increased speed, another major driver of the traffic will be the use of video, particularly high-definition. The report suggests that by 2018, nearly 80 percent of all traffic will be video, with a majority for HD video.
It’s not enough for tenants to see if their team will fit in five years, now they need to determine if their space will meet their increased need for speed too.