0 ‘First’ Boston Office Skyscraper gets New Owner

Ames building court street in Boston

Credit: Wikipedia

The Ames Building at 1 Court Street will be getting a new owner. The building is known as the Boston’s “first skyscraper”.

From Wikipedia:

The Ames Building is a skyscraper located in Boston, Massachusetts. It is sometimes ranked as the tallest building in Boston from its completion in 1893 until 1915, when the Custom House Tower was built. However, the building was never the tallest structure in Boston. The steeple of the Church of the Covenant, completed in 1867, was much taller than the Ames Building. Nevertheless, it is considered to be Boston’s first skyscraper.

Located at 1 Court Street and Washington Mall in downtown Boston, the Ames Building was designed by the architectural firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge inRichardsonian Romanesque and paid for by Frederick L. Ames. It is the second tallest masonry load bearing-wall structure in the world, exceeded only by the Monadnock Building in Chicago, completed that same year.[2] It is thirteen stories high with a three-story granite base and sandstone and brick. The sandstone is from the Berea formation in Ohio and was supplied by Cleveland Quarries Company. Construction was completed in 1889, but interior work was not completed for occupancy until 1893. It became the corporate headquarters for the Ames families’ agricultural tool company.[3]

The Ames Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 26, 1974.

0 State Street Tower Offered to Public

State Street high-rise

Credit: Boston Globe

Office buildings are trading at records levels and the influx of capital into Boston shows no sign of letting up.  1 Lincoln Street which is home to State Street is offering a new twist, you can own a piece.

From the Boston Globe:

[The] venture led by Fortis Property Group of New York, which bought the 1.1-million-square-foot tower for just under $900 million in 2006, would sell a 48.88 percent interest in the building through a real estate investment trust called ETRE REIT, according to documents that were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the documents, ETRE said the State Street tower, built in 2003 and fully occupied by State Street Corp., is currently valued at $1.1 billion.

The move to hold a public stock offering for the building is the idea of ETRE Financial LLC, founded three years ago with the purpose of “facilitating the public listing of individual real estate assets to improve access, liquidity, and transparency in commercial real estate,” according to its website.

 

0 Office Tower Proposed in Downtown Boston in Winthrop Square

Is a new tower coming to downtown Boston, in Winthrop Square? Time will tell, but repurposing the shuttered garage site would be a welcome change.

rendering of new proposed office tower in boston financial district

Credit: The Boston Globe

According to The Boston Globe, the re-imagined tower “of up to 740 feet…would be a new centerpiece on the city’s rapidly changing skyline…The building would occupy one of the last major development sites in the Financial District, replacing a decrepit city-owned parking garage at Winthrop Square with a skyscraper that could cost as much as $900 million to build.”

The Globe article also includes a photo gallery of the proposed downtown Boston tower.

0 More Office Towers Wanted in Boston

The Boston office market needs more towers to accommodate the forecasted future growth and tenant demands of strong infrastructure with abundant amenities.  Tower’s no longer solely focus on traditional tenants, now prospective tenants range technology firms to ecommerce.

office towers in Boston

Credit: Wikipedia

Cathy Thompson, Executive vp at DTZ, discussed in an interview with the BBJ the notion that Boston is still very much a landlord’s market:

“In the Back Bay and Seaport submarkets, vacancies in the Class A towers are in the low single digits. Some the spaces in the upper floors in the Back Bay towers are commanding rents in the $80s (per square foot). In the Seaport, the top rents are in the low $60s in the new spaces. There’s a flight to quality, an upgrading of space. Landlords are taking advantage of the fact that there isn’t much high quality space available right now for blocks of space above 75,000 square feet.”

The full interview with Ms. Thompson is available on the Boston Business Journal’s website.