0 Boston Real Estate Developers are Building ‘on spec’ Office Space

Cambridge Crossing at 250 North Street

Credit: Boston Globe

If we build it they will come. This is not the mind set of all owners; those willing to make that bet, however, have been rewarded with new tenants. Only four buildings in Boston can deliver over 150K SF today, while eight proposed buildings can deliver sometime in the future.

According to the Boston Globe, “speculative building has [traditionally] been a rare and risky move in Boston’s relatively conservative development sector. Office builders typically don’t move dirt until they have leased at least half the space they’re planning. It’s a cautious approach that has protected Boston’s office market against the types of booms and busts that some other cities have experienced, but it’s also one reason the current building surge has mostly centered on housing. Now, with growing tech-oriented companies such as Wayfair and Amazon searching for large blocks of space — and finding few — more developers are mulling a roll of the dice…Rather than sign a lease and then embark on a three-year construction project…developers are considering jumping the line.

You can read the Boston Globe’s article, here.

0 Winthrop Square Tower Pushes to Maintain Height

Winthrop Square tower development

Credit: Boston Globe

No change in height from the developer for Winthrop Square tower.

From Curbed, Boston:

The main bone of contention re: the development is its height, which will likely stretch to 775 feet. That has raised concerns about potential shadows that the tower might cast on the Common and the Public Garden.

Is Millennium considering cutting the height? No. We feel this project was holistically designed at its optimum size in response to achieving the goals that the city required for this public asset.

0 Darkness Looms over Winthrop Square Tower Project

The shadows that will be cast from Millennium Partners proposed Winthrop Square project might darken this development. Who knew, or who should have known, that shadow effect on the Common and Public Garden existed?

Winthrop Square tower casts shadows

Credit: Boston Globe

From the Boston Globe:

Millennium’s proposal, according to the developer’s analysis, would be out of compliance on average about 36 minutes a day over the course of a year on the Common and on average about five minutes a day over the course of a year on the Garden.

“You can correct for water with irrigation. You can correct for nutrients with fertilizer,” said Liz Vizza, executive director of the Friends of the Public Garden. “You cannot correct when you lose light.”

0 Digitas Leases 200,000 RSF at 40 Water St. in Congress Sq.

Office building at 40 Water Street

Credit: Banker and Tradesman

Digitas is on the move, literally; the ad agency DigitasLBi recently signed a lease at 40 Water Street to lease 200,000 RSF.

According to Banker and Tradesman, Digitas has “been shopping for office space for more than two years, with its 200,000-square-foot lease at 33 Arch St. set to expire in 2017. Related Beal is renovating 40 Water St. to make way for open-format offices topped with a 6-story glass addition and tree-lined roof deck overlooking Post Office Square.”

More information is available on B&T.

0 Class B Office Space in Downtown Crossing Could Net $50M

Financial district boston office building

Credit: BBJ

Class B office space at 258-262 Washington St. and 85 Devonshire St. in Downtown Crossing could fetch in excess of $525 PSF. The Class B office market in the Financial District has seen strong rent growth over the last 36 months with prices ranging from the upper $30’s to the upper $40’s PSF.

From the Boston Business Journal:

The buildings together encompass about 92,000 square feet and span the stretch of Water Street between Washington and Devonshire streets near the State Street MBTA stop…Boston-based real estate investment and development firm KS Partners owns the property and has invested more than $5 million in the past three years to help rejuvenate it.

Marketing materials obtained by the Business Journal indicate that the the Washington and Devonshire property is “one of the last Downtown Class B repositioning opportunities” that is “an opportunity to capture momentum” for retail repositioning along Washington Street. The stretch of Washington Street fronts the Freedom Trail and is currently leased by a Subway and a Vitamin Shoppe.

0 Downtown Crossing Embodies Boston’s Modernization

view of Boston from a roof deck

Credit: BBJ

Boston’s Downtown Crossing (DTX) is ground zero for development and change in Boston. The $3.9 billion invested in the past decade is evident by transformations to the streetscape and skyline.

According to the Boston Business Journal, “the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District recently issued a report titled ‘The Transformation of Downtown Crossing’ to provide a progress report about the district’s development.”

“We have seen tremendous growth in a number of areas throughout the BID — from major new construction, such as 45 Province, Millennium Place and Millennium Tower, to a growing number of retail and new businesses that are attracting additional employees and clients to the area, to our status as one of the fastest growing residential neighborhoods in the city,” said Rosemarie Sansone, president and CEO of the BID, in the report. “The next phase of our development includes a strategic planning exercise, which will be under way soon.”

You can read the full article on the BBJ’s website.

0 Tech Companies Heading to Downtown Boston

downtown crossing offices

Credit: BBJ

Location, Location and Location.  The largest concentration of office space north of NYC is Boston’s Financial District and including in its size is easy access by commuter rail, T, Boat, bus and yes, car.

The tech audience seems most attracted to the proximity to the Red Line; with quick access to E. Cambridge and Kendall Square, and prices that are 10% – 20% less in comparable asset classes, the market’s appeal is strong.

According to the BBJ, “In the city’s post-recession economy, more than 2.1 million square feet of professional services, law firms and consultancies have vacated the traditional downtown neighborhood for a spiffier Innovation District address. But at the same time, some 1.8 million square feet of technology, advertising, media and information-based companies — also known as TAMI tenants — have flooded into downtown and the area around North Station.”

Additional information is available on the Boston Business Journal’s website, here.

Related Available Office Space
Boston financial District office space for lease

0 Downtown Crossing Experiencing Major Redevelopment

Boston office tower construction in downtown crossing

Credit: Curbed

The skyline of Boston’s downtown crossing have never seen so much change as we are witnessing now.  This location simply makes sense for concentrated development due to direct access to the Red, Green, Orange and Blue lines combined with its walking distance to the core of the Financial District and Back Bay.

According to Curbed Boston, there are fewer areas of Boston seeing more large-scale development than relatively tiny Downtown Crossing. Spires such as the almost-done Millennium Tower and the proposed One Bromfield (and the nearby Winthrop Square Garage redevelopment) could finally pivot the neighborhood away from its 9-to-5 feel and toward a more 24-7, work-live environment.

The Curbed article also maps the five biggest developments impacting the available Downtown Crossing office space:

  1. Millennium Tower
  2. One Bromfield
  3. 171 Tremont St
  4. 533 Washington St
  5. Winthrop Square Tower

0 Check out Analytics Co InsightSquared’s new Boston HQ

Cool office space in Boston

Credit: Boston Business Journal

Have a peak at what groups are doing with their new office space.

The BBJ posted a photo gallery of InsightSquared’s new Boston HQ, and notes the following:

The new headquarters, which InsightSquared cemented with an office-warming party last week, is a far cry from where they started in 2010. Back then, they were working out of a tiny space at Bessemer Venture Partners.

“It feels great to be here,” said CEO Fred Shilmover at the company’s office-warming party last week. “It feels like our first grownup office.”

InsightSquared is backed by $27 million in venture funding and employs 170, up from less than half that amount in 2014.

0 Boston Residents can Monitor City’s Development Projects

CoUrbanize logoWhat is going on over there?  That is one question that gets asked time and time again about commercial developments in Boston. Looking to track the Hub’s developments? Now there is an App for that.

According to the BBJ, “Boston residents will be able to track local projects, find meeting times, and submit online feedback through a new online forum hosted on Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development website and at CoUrbanize.com. The move, the city said, would increase transparency in the development process for city-owned land and city-funded housing developments…The city of Boston is using the CoUrbanize platform to catalogue information about city-owned land and buildings available for development, in addition to collecting information about affordable housing developments in which the city has an investment.”

The full article is available on the Boston vertical of the BizJournals website: BizJournals.com/Boston.