0 Bisnow Posts Cool Office Spaces in Boston

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Cool office space in south boston

Credit: Bisnow

The cool office contestants have submitted their new digs. Please have a look and see how yours stacks up.

Bisow recently released its monthly reader pics, noting “It’s been a month since we asked for cool office space pictures, and the submissions have been coming in steadily—with about 95% of them cool (though we did get a pic of a cubicle farm, as retro ’80s as Ferris Bueller; it might be cool again in 20 years). Keep them coming to dees.stribling@bisnow.com.”

Read more at Bisnow.

0 Winthrop Square Garage Project Looks to Add Developer

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Winthrop Square development land

Credit: Boston Globe

The shuttered city garage on Federal Street was on center stage at the Great Hall at Faneuil Hall, so to speak.  What is in store for our future?

From the Boston Globe:

Six teams of developers and architects, eager in their suits, stood by posterboard presentations and 3-D models and explained the tall towers they’d very much like to build on the site of the Winthrop Square Garage in downtown Boston…Looking at the presentations, one could be forgiven for forgetting that these developers are vying to build one of the tallest buildings in Boston. Sure, everyone had a scale model of their full tower, but most focused their energies on the space where the building meets the street, and on the soaring public halls, pocket parks, and black-box theaters they’re promising to enliven it. After all, that’s where most Bostonians would experience these buildings most of the time.

The BRA says it wants to name a developer soon, but expect it to be months, not weeks, before that happens. The authority hasn’t yet opened financial documents attached to the proposals, which detail offers to purchase or lease the site and each team’s wherewithal to build the thing. After that’s done, BRA real estate chief Ed O’Donnell said, the authority is likely to winnow the pack down to a few finalists and invite them in for another round of interviews. While O’Donnell insists he’d like to name a developer while the real estate market is still hot, reading between the lines that sounds more like it will happen in August or September than in July.

0 Office Prices in Downtown Crossing Continue to Grow

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Downtown Crossing office space

Credit: Banker and Tradesman

Office trades in the Class A and B segments continue northward with the latest on West Street in Downtown Crossing for $16M.

From Banker&Tradesman:

There’s “another category where they [real estate investors] see potential for price appreciation: class B office buildings…The latest example: 33-41 West St. in Downtown Crossing, a fully-leased leased office building recently acquired by a New York developer for $16 million.

At $472 per foot, it’s one of the highest prices paid for a property in the category, said Robert Tito, a principal with NAI Hunneman in Boston…Built in 1899, the 38,000-square-foot structure was last acquired in 2008 by SMC Management of Watertown for $7.2 million.”

0 Millennium Partners Adds Downtown Crossing Cafè

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Boston Burnham Building

Credit: Bizjournals.com

Another caffeine fill up station is coming to Downtown Crossing to serve the ever-growing day and night population.

According to the Boston Business Journal, “Millennium Partners has leased a space in Downtown Crossing’s historic Burnham Building to Caffè Nero, a European coffee house, which will bring the 335,000-square-foot commercial space at the building and the adjacent Millennium Tower to full occupancy…The coffeeshop will be located on Summer Street less than half a mile from Downtown Crossing’s first Caffè Nero, which is located at the base of Millenium Place, another high-end condominium complex developed by Millennium Partners. Caffè Nero also has locations in Jamaica Plain, the South End and the Longwood Medical area.”

You can click through to jump to the BBJ article.

0 With Boston’s Economic Growth comes… Traffic

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Traffic on old Boston artery

Image Credit: Wbur

Traffic in major cities like Boston is nothing new.  Traffic for me had necessitated leaving my house in Metro West by 5:45 AM to ensure my inbound commute doesn’t take more than 25 – 35 minutes.

According to a report on wburg.org, “Greater Boston is the sixth-most-gridlock-plagued urban area in the country, and it’s costing you a lot of time and money…The average driver in the region spends 64 hours a year — a workweek-and-a-half — stuck in traffic. That’s twice what it was in Boston just 30 years ago, adding about $1,400 a year to the average commuter’s costs.”

The full article is available on WBUR.org.

0 Boston is Contemporizing Outward, not Upward

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Credit: B&T

Credit: B&T

Boston is clearly seeing a tremendous amount of new construction from office to multi-family in all areas of the city. Once you dig deeper into the numbers you come to realize that the height of the vast majority of new projects doesn’t exceed 200 – 300 feet. The exceptions are 1 Dalton and Millennium Tower at 700 feet and 690 feet, respectively. Boston developers instead are building what the market wants at a price point the market can support. Some of the challenges with going about 300 feet requires an additional elevator core which increases the add on factor.

According to Banker and Tradesman, “almost all of Boston’s true office skyscrapers – 500 feet and up – were built in the 1980s and before. The Hancock and Prudential towers may be gems of the Boston skyline, but they are also the last of a dying breed and one we are unlikely to see again anytime soon…Since 2000, Boston has seen 52 new office, condo and apartment buildings take shape. The vast majority of them – 36 – are between 200 and 300 feet.”

You can read the full article on B&T’s website.

0 Cambridge and Kendall Square Office Rents Continue to Surge

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In short, the Office market in greater Boston has rents continuing to surge upward with fewer available options. Kendall Square and select Cambridge neighborhoods lead the charge, with rents up 76% since 2010.

Chart of Boston office rent prices

Credit: The Real Reporter

From The Real Reporter:

Kendall has enjoyed the most dramatic surge in rents during the present economic boom, currently going into its seventh year, as local rents bottomed out in 2010 following the mortgage recession.  Other areas benefitting from current dynamics include most urban areas as well as the Western suburbs, including 9 West, buoyed by changes in Needham.

Vacancy remains at very low levels as 49,000 sf of positive absorption was balanced with 66,000 sf of new property completions, resulting in a slight vacancy uptick of 0.1 percent, to 5.5 percent.

0 Hancock Tower Remains Largely Unoccupied

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Hancock Tower in back bay

Credit: Boston Globe

New England’s tallest building has space for you. The tower has approximately 450,000 square feet available for lease.

From the Boston Globe:

About one-fourth of the space in 200 Clarendon — or what most of us still call the John Hancock Tower — is sitting vacant after leases expired and tenants such as John Hancock moved to new digs. Landlord Boston Properties Inc. acknowledged Wednesday that efforts to fill it have been going “a little bit slow.”

Rents at the top of the tower run $70 to $80 per square foot — among the priciest in town. Boston Properties has given no sign it plans to offer discounts to fill 450,000 vacant square feet. Still, the slowdown reflects a bit of a softening at the very top of Boston’s market. Real estate brokers say law firms, financiers, and others who seek trophy office space are pushing back against building owners who want to hike rents.

You can read the full Globe article, here.

0 100 Northern Ave. will be Dancing in Flight

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Air Jumpers in Boston Seaport

Image Credit: Boston Globe

Joe Fallon’s 100 Northern Ave. in the Seaport is preparing for a launch party different then we have seen before: vertical dance. Boston’s Seaport is one of the country’s hottest submarkets with office tower trades in excess of $1,000 per square foot and the new world headquarters to GE.

According to the Boston Globe, “the vertical dance group Bandaloop rehearsed its creative moves from the 17th floor of the new building on 100 Northern Ave. on Tuesday…The pioneering vertical dance company is making a rare appearance in Boston to commemorate The Fallon Company’s latest development milestone: The 534,000-square-foot, 17-story commercial building. It’s the fifth building to be completed at the vibrant, mixed-use Fan Pier neighborhood and is set against the backdrop of Boston’s cityscape and Boston Harbor.”

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

0 Highest-rated CEO in Boston Overtakes San Francisco’s Top Exec

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Bain and Co. CEO

Credit: BBJ

Boston beat out the Bay area for the highest rated CEO according to Glassdoor. Google moves to 7th place as Bain takes the 1st place spot.

According to the BBJ, “Bob Bechek, worldwide managing director of Bain & Co. “scored a 99 percent approval rating from employees and former employees on the site [and] overtook former Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page, who was No. 1 on the list last year…Bechek, a Harvard Business School graduate, has been working at the Boston-based management consulting business for the past 30 years and has been CEO since 2012.”

You can read the full article on the Boston Business Journal’s website, here.