0 Downtown Boston Parcel near I-93 is Available for Redevelopment

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Downtown Boston real estate for sale

Credit: Boston Business Journal

New development opportunities in the city of Boston are being offered up by the State.  Are you looking for 5.5 acres for your new corporate headquarters within walking distance of South Station?

From the BBJ:

A 5.5-acre state-owned parcel of land between Chinatown and South Station is being made available for redevelopment, creating as much as 2 million square feet of new construction, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced this morning.

The site is located at 185 and 165 Kneeland St., currently home to the District 6 headquarters for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy office and the Veolia Energy steam plant. The MassDOT district headquarters will be relocated or replaced, and a scaled-down version of the Veolia North America plant will be included as part of the redevelopment, state officials said.

0 Logan Airport Influenced GE’s Selection of Fort Point HQ

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logan airport with office space in the background

Credit: BBJ

Good enough for GE, good enough for me.  Boston is number one for  a major U.S. city with its international airport 3.5 miles from downtown.

A recent BBJ article notes, “access to transportation is one of the key reasons that General Electric Co. set its sights on Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood for its new headquarters, said Gov. Charlie Baker at a business luncheon in Waltham on Wednesday. Not necessarily public transportation, he said, but air transportation.

“The airport has dramatically expanded its domestic nonstop capacity and international nonstop capacity with all kinds of plans to continue to grow its international nonstop capacity over the course of the next decade,” he said at the Massachusetts High Technology Council’s annual meeting at Bentley University in Waltham on Wednesday. “That starts to look really special and that’s not necessarily something we think about when we think about why GE put Boston and Massachusetts on the map.”

What Cities Gain When Their Airports Are Close to Downtown. This is a piece that came out in 2012, interesting enough, we don’t move our airports or our city centers.

0 Boston’s Projected Skyline in 2020

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office space at Prudential center

Credit: Curbed Boston

The Boston Skyline is expect to change by 2020 and here’s what it might look like. The interesting part of this is 3 of the top 10 are residential, where is years past the top 10 have always been office.

Curbed, Boston recently published a projected list of the 10 tallest buildings in 2020, including the following three:

  • 200 Clarendon
  • Winthrop Square Tower
  • Prudential Center Tower

You can find the full list on Curbed Boston

0 Bates College Student Mailboxes go the Way of the Dodo

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Bates College in Maine

Credit: Boston Globe

Colleges and offices seem to be getting rid of them.  When I tour office space with clients and review plans one items I never see is a mail room with mailboxes in it.  Rest assured we still get mail, but by no means is it the mainstay of communication.

According to an article in the Boston Globe “at the end of the summer, the [Bates College] boxes will click shut for the last time, a sign of how the Internet is changing college campuses.”

The Globe’s article is available, here.

0 Staples Rolls-out Office Space to Pair with Supplies

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Staples will be offering far more than office supplies; they’re now also providing office space.  Yes, the new rollout will allow you to have office space where you buy supplies.

What they have:

  • Parking
  • Bricks & Mortar
  • Staff
  • Endless supply of supplies and snacks

The real question: do I want my clients to visit me at Staples?

According to a press release, Staples will be opening up communal workspaces at three locations in the Greater Boston area.

0 One Dalton Street Poised to Become NE’s Tallest Residential Building

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1 Dalton Street Back Bay

Credit: Boston Magazine

If living in the tallest residential building in New England is you dream, 1 Dalton Street should be on your list.

One Dalton, by the numbers:

  • 740 feet: Height of One Dalton, the tallest residential building in New England.
  • 790 feet: Height of 200 Clarendon (the Hancock Tower), the tallest building in New England.
  • 61: Number of stories, including a private restaurant and bar on the 50th floor.
  • 360°: Panorama from Boston Harbor to the Cape at certain residences.
  • $5.5 million: Price of a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom residence on the 42nd floor.

From Boston Magazine:

Daltonians will enjoy five-star amenities that would make a Back Bay brownstone dweller swoon. Want a martini at 3 a.m.? A bartender from the 50th-floor private restaurant will oblige. Longing for the links? Visit the golf simulation room. There’s also a private theater, spa, salon, and health club—plus a 24-hour valet, laundry services, and housekeeping.

At home, residents can take in unobstructed views of the city from floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Many units have private balconies; all have fireplaces. One-bedrooms start at 900 square feet, and four- bedrooms start at 4,000 square feet, with an average expected cost of about $6 million.

Additional information is available on Boston Magazine.

0 Lyft is on the hunt for new office space in Boston

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Lyft app screen

Credit: BBJ

Lyft is on the move for a new office in Boston. CIC provided a good foothold to start the operation, but now a permanent home is in the cards according to Tyler George.

From the Boston Business Journal:

“We wanted to start at the CIC where we could integrate ourselves with a lot of really forward-thinking businesses in Kendall Square and Cambridge, but we wanted to have a permanent office to continue to grow our staff and have in-person support for our drivers,” [Lyft’s Boston General Manager Tyler George] said in an interview.

“We want to be able to have a big enough space to hold events and parties for drivers and passengers,” he said. “It’ll be a significant piece of real estate.” Venture-backed Lyft was founded in 2012 and earlier this year landed another $1 billion from investors including General Motors Corp., valuing the company at $5.5 billion.

0 Franklin and Federal Street Office Buildings sell for for $177M

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Franklin offices for lease

70 Franklin St.

Office trades continue with the sale of 175 Federal Street and 70 Franklin Street to Deka Immobilien Investment GmbH’s of Germany in excess of $177 million.

According to multiple sources, Deka Immobilien has been tabbed as winning bidder on both assets, committing in excess of $135 million for 175 Federal St. and more than $42 million to secure the Franklin Street property which dates to 1910. The German-based sponsor of several open-end real estate funds buying on a global basis and with assets in the Northeast “definitely” has 175 Federal St. under agreement, one source insists, a notion supported by others, and the same entity has been named winning bidder for 70 Franklin St., multiple sources further maintain.

More information on both properties is available on The Real Reporter.

Additional Property Information
175 Federal Street office space
70 Franklin Street offices for lease

0 Downtown Crossing Office Tower would Trump Millennium

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One Bromfield office tower in Downtown crossing

Credit: BBJ

Midwood is on the move with a 59-story office tower in Downtown Crossing (DTX) which would surpass Millennium in height. The building would be a combination of residential and retail space.

According to an article on the BBJ, “Midwood originally proposed a 28-story tower on the site in 2008, but the project stalled due to the economic crash…The current iteration of the project is substantially larger than the original proposal. An architectural presentation Midwood will give at the city this week presents plans for a 419-unit, 59-story residential building spanning 605,000 square feet.”

You can more on the DTX tower on the BBJ.

0 Shared Office Space Continues to Grow

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The migration from “Me Space” to “We Space” will continue as employers accommodate flex time and independent working.  At PwC the North American worker had 176 less personal pace in 2012 versus 2010.

Liquid space

Credit: FastCompany

According to a recent article on FastCompany.com, “Companies like WeWork, which offers small offices within a shared community of workers on a monthly basis and recently raised funding at a $16 billion valuation, have helped building owners adapt as the renting of vast swaths of cubicle farms in three- or five-year increments falls out of style. But as these real estate developers have watched WeWork rise, they’re looking for ways to more directly tap into the trends that have made the company so successful. “When you look at the growth of, for example, the coworking companies, it’s clear that long-term leases with little flexibility are probably not entirely the way of the future,” says Deborah Boyer, EVP and director of asset management for the SWIG Company, which owns almost 9 million square feet of real estate. Some real estate companies have developed their own prebuilt spaces to accommodate growing companies. Others have partnered with WeWork to design entire buildings with a new type of work in mind.”

You can read the full article on Fast Company’s website.