0 Office Space Boom in Boston Area Suburbs

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Wil Catlin

new office building in Needham for TripAdvisor

Credit: Boston Globe

The greater Boston economy is strong with jobs, construction and capital. Many office users are seeking value while trying to straddle the live-work-play model for their staff. Not every company can be located within a five-minute walk of South Station, nor can they offer free parking to their employees. What we are seeing is locations that offer infrastructure, reap the benefits of today’s strong office market.

A recent Boston Globe article remarked, “the western suburbs around Route 128 are experiencing a building boom, with new headquarters for growing companies such as TripAdvisor and Vistaprint among five huge developments under construction in Needham, Waltham, and neighboring towns…The attractions of the suburbs include much lower rents and lots of choices. Moreover, the workspaces — either new or newly renovated — are far from the souless corporate boxes of the 1980s that dotted the suburban landscape. The interiors of some new offices look as if they could comfortably fit along Seaport Boulevard in Boston or Broadway in Cambridge.”

Jump over to the Globe’s website for its full article.

0 ‘Cool Offices’ are Casual, Communal and Homey

Posted on October 23, 2014 by Wil Catlin

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 Open Office Experiment in Boston Fosters Inclusion and Collaboration

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Wil Catlin

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 Commercial Real Estate Trends towards Open Floor Plans and Collaborative Workspaces

Posted on October 12, 2014 by Wil Catlin

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

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Wil Catlin

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.

0 FinTech Program for Burgeoning Boston Financial Services Startups

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Wil Catlin

Entrepreneurs: do you have an idea focused on the Financial Services sector? Look no further, Fidelity and Amazon would like to help back fledgling Boston startups through a new program, tagged the Fintech Sandbox.

A Boston Globe editorial highlights the target:

“Fintech entrepreneurs have a unique problem, which is the high cost of data to help them build applications,” said David Jegen, managing director of Devonshire Investors, the private investment arm of the Johnson family, which controls Fidelity. “They raise $2 million of venture capital funding, and then spend $500,000 of it buying market data from Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters. Or they show up to customers, who say, ‘Nice app, but it hasn’t been tested on robust data sets.’ We think that is a problem we can help solve.”

0 What Does Cool, Funky Office Space in Back Bay Look Like?

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Workbar

What does cool funky space look like, or better yet how does it feel? The virtue of my business is to walk in and out of company offices daily and I must say that this one grabbed my attention as cool and funky. It isn’t so much as to the building or layout, but the culture that the company extends to its employees and customers.

Bostinno.streetwise.co articulates this quality in its assessment of Karmaloop’s ‘swagged out’ Back Bay office space:

“Karmaloop stickers bearing the company’s classic chunky logo in all prints and colors sit in neat piles atop a coffee table. A giant-sized, glittering mannequin sits with plastic legs crossed coquettishly on one of the entryway’s couches, while another figure, a frightening yet sort of high fashion clown marionette, looms over the space. Both were crafted by ecommerce company’s outspoken founder and CEO, and proud Bostonian Greg Selkoe.”

Let us know your definition of cool, funky office space in the comments below, or on twitter @bradviors

To read the full bostinno article, follow this link.

0 Cambridge Co-working Office Space Sends Five Entrepreneurs to Shark Tank

Posted on April 22, 2014 by Wil Catlin

Workbar, coworking space in Cambridge MA

Credit: BBJ

Co-working office spaces continue to create a platform where innovative ideas can turn into companies. Yes, I’m a fan of Shark Tank and I love how the show boils a product pitch down to five minutes from pitch to investment.

Reporting on the local angle on the show, the BBJ notes that “entrepreneurs drove from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to pitch their business ideas at Cambridge co-working space Workbar on Thursday in hopes of getting national exposure on ABC’s Shark Tank…About 100 people were standing in line an hour before pitches started.

The growing interest and relevance of co-working office space in Cambridge is beneficial to both the entrepreneurs, who will spur future growth, as well as the environment and infrastructure that surrounds it.

For details on the five selected entrepreneurs, read the full article on the Boston Business Journal.

0 Boutique co-working space opens in Back Bay

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Wil Catlin

More co-working office space is now available in Boston for upstart companies to choose from. Not too sure if you can make a long term lease commitment? Idea Space at 867 Boylston Street is the newest to jump in to this evolving market. Their niche: boutique co-working space.

Idea Space in Boston

According to coverage on the BBJ, “the 4,500-square-foot space is home to about 25 small companies.” Idea Space owner, Lauren Mearn, notes the impetus for opening the co-working space in Back Bay in the BBJ article:

“people want ‘a cool place to work that wasn’t a coffee shop and that wasn’t home'”

The full article on the Boston Business Journal is available, here.

0 What does Cool Creative Office Space mean to you?

Posted on March 13, 2014 by BonnyDoorakian

Credit: Inc.com

I ask this question as it seems to have become quite the commodity in today’s office market. I show space that is “cool creative office space” all the time. I see new tech startups trying to be cool or shabby chic in order to recruit the younger tech office tenant. There are only so many buildings in Boston that already have this look and feel, so I began to really research into what makes a space cool, creative and collaborative and I came across an invaluable article from INC.com.

What I found is that it’s beyond just bricks and mortar and other physical attributes of the space or building. Bottom line, companies do not want their dad’s office space, they want to create an atmosphere, an experience for their employees through design and company culture.