0 Startups Increasingly Priced Out of Cambridge Real Estate

Shared Pharma space at Mass Innovation Labs.

Mass Innovation Labs; Image Courtesy of Crains.

Small to mid-sized tenants need to seek the value play by looking along the Red Line corridor in Downtown Crossing, with rents ranging from the high $20’s to mid-$40’s PSF.

A recent Crains.com article notes, “Smaller companies, however, are feeling the squeeze. The problem is more acute for Boston’s booming biopharma industry than for tech companies…More than 96 percent of Cambridge’s 10.24 million square feet of lab space is occupied, according to an analysis by commercial real estate investor Transwestern.”

You can read more on Crains.

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

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 Kendall Square Office Rents Reach Record Level

4 Cambridge Center

Four Cambridge Center

With the boost of office rents in East Cambridge, Downtown Crossing has become the new hotbed for Redline creative and tech companies with Class B rents still in the $30’s PSF.

The Boston Globe is reporting “Office rents in Kendall Square have hit an all-time high of almost $67 per square foot, breaking a record last set in 2001, according to the real estate brokerage Transwestern RBJ…Transwestern said the average asking rent on a top-tier office space in East Cambridge set a new record of $66.63 in the final quarter of 2014, edging out the previous record of $65.85 set in 2001. East Cambridge’s vacancy rate of 6.7 percent was lower than many parts of Boston’s central business district, but higher than those of the smaller office markets of South Station, North Station, and Longwood, whose vacancy rates ranged from 2 to 4.4 percent.”

Additional insight on the East Cambridge boom is available on the Boston Globe.

Office availability and neighborhood information for Downtown Crossing and Kendall Square are available on the following submarket pages:
Downtown Crossing offices
Kendall Square office space