The workforce that rides to work on our public transpiration and roadways if very different today than it was 10 years ago. Shared workspace environments like WeWork have changed how business’s get up and running and reduced some of the barriers to going out on your own.
0 Boston Office Sale Sets High-Water Mark for the Year at $1.3B
Credit: BBJ
The office and retail real estate border by: Boylston Street, Berkeley Street, St. James Avenue and Clarendon Street has traded hands from Equity Office to Oxford Properties for $1.29 billion.
The addresses include 500 Boylston Street and 222 Berkeley Street in Boston’s Back Bay.
“The deal crosses the $1,000 per square foot barrier, with the 706,862-square-foot, 25-story 500 Boylston St. selling for $1,068 per square foot, and the 519,608-square-foot, 22-story complex at 222 Berkeley St. selling for $1,029 per square foot. Just a handful of deals have crossed that mark in Greater Boston’s sales history,” according to a BBJ article.
You can read more on the sizable transaction on the Boston Business Journal’s website, Bizjournals.com.
0 Boylston Street Office Rents Rank 7th on List of Country’s Most Expensive
Credit: Boston Herald
Boylston Street in Boston’s Back Bay is expensive, but not too expensive. In the 2nd quarter of this year my company signed an expansion and renewal at 745 Boylston Street after conducting a thorough search for alternate options. We chose to stay and expand based on our attraction to the area’s amenities, proximity to highways and our customers.
Office rents on Boylston Street, however, do rank among the priciest in the country, according to the Boston Herald.
From the Boston Herald:
The Back Bay’s main thoroughfare has an average rent of $67.44 per square foot, thanks to its marquis office properties and tenant list dominated by hedge funds, and private equity and law firms, according to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle, a Chicago commercial real estate company…Those factors have allowed Boylston Street landlords to raise rents 1.3 times faster than on other cities’ most expensive streets since 2013, the JLL report states. And Boston Properties’ 888 Boylston St., a 17-story office tower set for completion next summer, already has signed record-high leases.
0 Map of Boston Coworking Office Space
Coworking office space in Boston by geographic location, courtesy of Xconomy:
Credit: Xconomy
Andy Palmer, a Boston serial entrepreneur and angel investor, ‘thinks Boston would be best served by a series of spaces spread among different neighborhoods along the subway system’s Red Line, which touches the city’s busiest startup hubs, including Kendall Square in Cambridge and the Seaport District and Downtown Crossing in Boston. And if you look at the map, that strategy seems to be playing out…Boston’s neighborhoods “all need good, solid coworking spaces because they all have startups and founders that want to do startups in these areas,” Palmer says. “It’s healthy to have these short-term lease options in every one of these areas.”’
0 Boston to Limit Office Tower Signs
Credit: Boston Globe
To get you companies name in lights on a building in Boston will now be a formalized policy according to the BRA. Personally I am a fan of fewer signs rather than seeing our rooftops littered with every brand that occupies our city.
According to a Boston Globe article, “The Boston Redevelopment Authority is working on a new sign policy, one that would formalize by early next year the agency’s often-informal approach, just as Boston’s building boom could bring another round of requests for prominent corporate signage.”
More from the Globe:
“Quite often, when you go to other cities, you’ll see corporate names on top of buildings,” said David Carlson, the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s deputy director for urban design. “The general preference [here] is to not have a skyline dominated by corporate signs and instead to have a skyline that’s dominated by hopefully interesting buildings.”
0 4 Class A Buildings in Boston Under Construction with At Least 50k Sq. Ft.
According to CoStar, there are 4 Class A buildings under construction that can accommodate users of 50,000 square feet or more. They are located in the Seaport and Back Bay and have combined number of 1,610,202 square feet.
| Building Address | Submarket Name | Number Of Stories | Rentable Building Area | Typical Floor Size | Max Floor Contiguous Space | Total Available Space (SF) |
| 888 Boylston | Back Bay | 17 | 425,000 | 25,000 | 26,170 | 89,173 |
| 100 Northern Ave | Seaport | 17 | 395,202 | 23,247 | 32,006 | 154,931 |
| 140 Northern Ave | Seaport | 13 | 375,000 | 30,769 | 28,846 | 374,998 |
| 121 Seaport Blvd | Seaport | 17 | 415,000 | 24,412 | 34,400 | 414,202 |
| Total | 1,610,202 |
0 Boston Class A Office Space with at Least 50k Sq. Ft. Draws Interest
Credit: Skanska
According to CoStar there are 20 Class A properties that can offer 50,000 square feet or more of contiguous office space in the Seaport, Back Bay or the Financial District (see full chart below).
From the Boston Globe:
Despite Boston’s development boom, big chunks of office space are scarce right now. As of Oct. 1, there were 17 tenants looking for 50,000 square feet or more of top-end office space in downtown Boston, according to real estate firm JLL, and just 11 blocks big enough to house them. That means buildings with room are drawing interest.
Three would-be tenants have proposed leasing all 180,000 square feet that Boston Properties has at 120 St. James, in the base of the old John Hancock Tower, president Douglas Linde told analysts recently. The space PWC left behind for the Seaport, at 125 High Street, also went quick. And Goodwin Procter’s soon-to-be-former home at 53 State has seen strong interest.
One addition to that list may soon be Skanska, offering “brand-new space with all the bells and whistles.”
| Building Address | Building Name | Submarket Name | Max Building Contiguous Space |
| 200 Berkeley St | Berkeley Bldg | Back Bay | 50,266 |
| 501 Boylston St | Back Bay | 62,644 | |
| 200 Clarendon St | John Hancock Tower | Back Bay | 121,989 |
| 2 Copley Pl | Tower 2 | Back Bay | 122,606 |
| 101 Huntington Ave | Back Bay | 60,858 | |
| 111 Huntington Ave | Back Bay | 70,191 | |
| 31 Saint James Ave | Park Square Bldg | Back Bay | 91,000 |
| 1 Beacon St | One Beacon | Financial District | 105,786 |
| 1 Federal St | One Federal Street | Financial District | 55,038 |
| 101 Federal St | 101 Federal Street | Financial District | 69,873 |
| 160 Federal St | Landmark | Financial District | 54,221 |
| One Financial Ctr | One Financial Center | Financial District | 59,106 |
| 125 High St | High Street Tower | Financial District | 78,034 |
| 50 Milk St | Financial District | 39,644 | |
| 50 Post Office Sq | Financial District | 117,200 | |
| 53 State St | Exchange Place | Financial District | 382,332 |
| 60 State St | Financial District | 57,897 | |
| 100 Summer St | Financial District | 115,402 | |
| 40 Water St | Congress Square | Financial District | 363,834 |
| 101 Seaport Blvd | PricewaterhouseCoopers | Seaport | 77,646 |
0 Boston’s Office Building Boom is Centralized
Last week I took a tour of the 48th floor at 200 Clarendon Street with Wayland Club Scouts, hosted by Patrick Mulvihill of Boston Properties, and “wow” was the comment echoed by all the scout’s and their parents. Now, the floor was completely shelled out with nothing but a cement floor, deck above and exterior windows. It was a great experience and the perfect perch to see how our city is growing vertically.
The growth, however, is consolidated in a few central areas – all of which were perfectly visible from the 48th floor.
From Curbed:
“Tim Logan broke down recent numbers from the Boston Redevelopment Authority that show 83 major projects going up in 19 of the city’s 25 neighborhoods for a total cost construction-wise of around $7 billion. “Yet they’re concentrated in a relative handful of places. About $4 billion worth of the construction — it includes everything from housing to hotels to new storefronts — is taking place in just three neighborhoods: the Seaport, downtown, and the Back Bay. Count the number of projects, and nearly a fourth are in two neighborhoods: South Boston and the Fenway.”
0 Boston Office Market Closes 10th Consecutive Quarter of Positive Absorption
Credit: TransWestern.net
The Boston Office market continues ahead with its 10th positive quarter of absorption.
From TWurls.com:
Greater Boston’s office market closed its 10th straight quarter of positive growth, albeit at a much slower pace than the 15-year record high of 2 million square feet absorbed during second-quarter, according to “officeSTATus — Q3 2015,” a new research report from Transwestern | RBJ. Despite tenants absorbing only 36,000 square feet of office space during third-quarter 2015, the market has seen a robust 3.6 million square feet of positive absorption during the past 12 months Ë•’ a more accurate indicator of market strength.
“We were unlikely to maintain the pace that was set during the second quarter, which had the highest absorption rate since the dot-com boom in 2000,” said Northeast Research Director Chase Bourdelaise. “An important contributor to the robust 12-month absorption growth is the continued positive gains to the region’s office-using employment, which has increased 12.0 percent since 2009.”
0 HYM Releases New Plans for Government Center Project
The plans for Government Center have been updated by HYM. The proposed plan consists of the following:
Credit: Bizjournals.com
- Two Apartment Tower:
- 486 units at 480 feet in height
- 291 Units at 299 feet in height
- Two Office Towers
- 1 million square feet at 528 feet in height
- 163,800 square feet at 157 feet in height
- Parking of 1,159 spaces
- Condo/Hotel Tower at 152 feet in height
- Retail build to suit that will anchor the Canal side of the site
From the BBJ:
The first phase, for which HYM submitted documentation on Monday, is a 45-story, 486-unit residential tower located along New Sudbury Street and a 43-story, 1 million-square-foot office tower located at the corner of New Chardon and Congress streets…HYM’s original plans had the office tower at 600 feet, and a hotel parcel at 275 feet, but those plans were revised in August 2013 to a 528-foot office tower and a 157-foot hotel. The Boston Redevelopment Authority approved the project in November 2013.
HYM’s project aims to connect Boston’s Bulfinch Triangle, Government Center, the West End, the North End and Beacon Hill with a near five-acre development area. It’s slated to be among the largest construction projects in the city — which itself has seen a fair number of cranes in the past few years — and at full buildout will include six new buildings with 812 residential units, 1.1 million square feet of office space, 85,000 square feet of retail space and a 196-room hotel.