The New Office/Lab Thread

[navigator4]

Haha it's not even the most unreasonable element of the theory.

As someone who works in government, I find it hilarious that these people believe the government is going to track them using the vaccine. The government can't even keep track of the people who give them their information (ie IRS, TAFDC, etc).

 

[12345]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1420042394855251970

 

[bigpicture7]

Wow, One Mem Drive just sold for $825million:

MetLife Investment Management and Norges Bank Investment Management Announce $825.1 Million Acquisition of One Memorial Drive

MetLife Investment Management (MIM), the institutional asset management business of MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET), and Norges Bank Investment Management (

www.businesswire.com

Robert Merck, global head of Real Estate and Agriculture at MetLife Investment Management, said: “We continue to see significant areas of opportunity within the commercial real estate sector despite the challenges posed by the pandemic over the last 18 months."

​

Based on both the buyer & quotes therein, this actually doesn't seem like an impending lab conversion for once.

 

[Vivanna]

Wow, One Mem Drive just sold for $825million:

MetLife Investment Management and Norges Bank Investment Management Announce $825.1 Million Acquisition of One Memorial Drive

MetLife Investment Management (MIM), the institutional asset management business of MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET), and Norges Bank Investment Management (

www.businesswire.com

​

​

Based on both the buyer & quotes therein, this actually doesn't seem like an impending lab conversion for once.

Wow is right! Over $2K PSF and they are going to upgrade it, rents have to be hitting $120 - $130 now!

 

[12345]

Boston's Labs Are Full, Rents Spike Over $100/SF With No Sign Of Stopping

Life sciences rents have surpassed $100 per SF triple-net in Boston, while vacancies in select submarkets sit as low as 0.1%, a new CBRE report finds.

www.bisnow.com

 

[jklo]

Boston's Labs Are Full, Rents Spike Over $100/SF With No Sign Of Stopping

Life sciences rents have surpassed $100 per SF triple-net in Boston, while vacancies in select submarkets sit as low as 0.1%, a new CBRE report finds.

www.bisnow.com

Maybe this thread should be renamed to "The New Lab Thread"

 

[bigpicture7]

Home-security firm SimpliSafe signs deal to double the size of its Boston HQ in 2022 - The Boston Globe

Home-security tech provider SimpliSafe has signed a lease that will enable the company to double the size of its Boston headquarters and add as many as 500 new jobs in the city over the next five years.

www.bostonglobe.com

SimpliSafe will relocate to 150,000 square feet in an office tower at 100 Summer St. next fall, leaving behind its 80,000-square-foot home a few blocks away at 294 Washington St. The lease agreement, to be announced Monday, represents the largest office expansion announced in the Financial District since the COVID-19 pandemic began...

 

[awood91]

https://www.cbre.com/insights/briefs/pulse-of-us-office-demand-us-office-demand-recovery-firmly-underway

CBRE market index puts Boston in the top place for the most large office users actively seeking space by market.

"The U.S. Tenants in the Market (TIM) Index fell by 1 point in September to 83, likely reflecting the conversion of many TIM to leases. Boston and San Francisco had the highest TIM Index levels, both above their pre-COVID baselines. The U.S. Leasing Activity Index jumped by 17 points to 93, driven by a surge in leasing in Boston, whose index reached a remarkable 210."

 

[Equilibria]

https://www.cbre.com/insights/briefs/pulse-of-us-office-demand-us-office-demand-recovery-firmly-underway

CBRE market index puts Boston in the top place for the most large office users actively seeking space by market.

"The U.S. Tenants in the Market (TIM) Index fell by 1 point in September to 83, likely reflecting the conversion of many TIM to leases. Boston and San Francisco had the highest TIM Index levels, both above their pre-COVID baselines. The U.S. Leasing Activity Index jumped by 17 points to 93, driven by a surge in leasing in Boston, whose index reached a remarkable 210."

Boston’s index (210) was propelled by two large leases: Wellington Management’s 524,000-sq.-ft. renewal/expansion and Moderna’s new lease for 462,000 sq. ft.

 

[stellarfun]

Globe update on Meta's (nee Facebook) lease of 50 Binney St.

.....Now, the space will be filled by Meta. Terms of their lease were not available.

Amid all this, the building itself has soared in value, as evidenced by a deal earlier in December when developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities sold a large stake in the property to investors at a price valuing the building at $1.2 billion. That equates to $2,253 per square foot.

Facebook set to grow in Kendall as parent company signs lease to triple its office space there - The Boston Globe

The space has traded hands several times since the building opened less than five years ago, reflecting the fast-moving real estate market in Kendall Square, where available space is scarce and pricey.

www.bostonglobe.com

And that's why there are new labs here, new labs there, new labs everywhere!

 

[bigpicture7]

Facebook set to grow in Kendall as parent company signs lease to triple its office space there - The Boston Globe

The space has traded hands several times since the building opened less than five years ago, reflecting the fast-moving real estate market in Kendall Square, where available space is scarce and pricey.

www.bostonglobe.com

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, signed a lease Wednesday for nearly 300,000 square feet of office space at 50 Binney St., which will roughly triple its footprint in Cambridge.

Amid all this, the building itself has soared in value, as evidenced by a deal earlier in December when developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities sold a large stake in the property to investors at a price valuing the building at $1.2 billion. That equates to $2,253 per square foot.

Who else is already extremely tired of the word "metaverse"?

 

[bigpicture7]

Globe update on Meta's (nee Facebook) lease of 50 Binney St.

Nice job @stellarfun, beat me by 15 seconds ; )

 

[393b40]

Who else is already extremely tired of the word "metaverse"?

Get used to it. There's a fuck of money to be made.

 

[shmessy]

Get used to it. There's a fuck of money to be made.

Yeah, I was just about to post 'It means nothing if WE'RE tired of it as long as that 24/7 fire hose of dollars is still flowing at capacity.'

I don't think any of us can fully grasp the magnitude of what is happening in the metro area. I couldn't help myself but post a comment under the Globe article about Boston/Cambridge/Somerville is becoming the present day version (in STEM) of Renaissance Florence.

 

[DBM]

I don't think any of us can fully grasp the magnitude of what is happening in the metro area.

The November CBRE nationwide office market report quantifies it quite adequately, it seems--if only from the perspective of office-leasing activity (of course there are so many other metrics that can be used to demonstrate the global juggernaut that is the Boston economy these days):

https://www.cbre.com/insights/brief...and-stable-in-november-despite-covid-concerns

Scroll-down and check-out figures 3-5 (you can also download the entire PDF report, but just scrolling through the synopsis is pretty sufficient for our purposes).

Compared to:

--Dallas/Ft. Worth
--Atlanta
--NYC
--Seattle
--Houston
--Denver
--Washington, DC
--LA
--SF
--Chicago
--Philly

Boston is just. crushing. it.

For example, in Figure 3 chart, the average score of the dirty dozen is 85. Dallas/Ft. Worth is second, at 101 . . . and Boston is first at 123.

Did someone say conspicuous outlier?!?

 

[stefal]

Just a week prior to the beginning of the pandemic, WeWork released a press statement that explained they were the largest tenant in Boston. It was a market on fire. Is there any word on what is happening/going to happen with the 1.6 million square feet of office space they have here?

I feel it could come back, following an official beginning to a "new normal," where perhaps office workers will want to seek space in the city to work, but not necessarily in their office/if they don't have enough desks at their office following a downsizing/transfer to hoteling. And perhaps more offices on the medium-smaller size will sign contracts with WeWork to guarantee space to their employees, etc... It could be interesting, but I wonder how long they can hold out..

 

[stellarfun]

More conversions.

Davis Cos. closed last week on the sale of three office buildings in the area — fetching nearly $1.1 billion in all — with the vast majority of the space destined for conversion to labs. The deals, and the size of the transaction, speak to the intense demand for space by the Boston-area biotech industry — which is exploding in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic — to the point that even buildings that house well-known tech companies are seen as better used for life science firms.

One of the buildings is Charles Park, sold to Alexandria.

When Alexandria first disclosed the deal in June, the company said it was already in lease negotiations with “several cutting-edge life science companies” to fill the building, which should be ready in 2023.

Davis said leasing had slowed during the pandemic at the 309,000-square-foot building, [@ One Cabot Road, Medford] whose tenants include Inkbit, Clario, and Amazon. But when an empty office suite was converted to life science space, potential tenants jumped at the opportunity.

“It was like a food fight. As soon as we announced it, we had six tenants lined up,” said Davis, who ultimately leased the space to Torus Biosystems, a spinoff from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. “As an office building this might have been worth $90 million, but in this deal [as potential lab space] it was valued at $175 million.”

From Cambridge to Medford, more office buildings bound for lab space - The Boston Globe

Davis Cos. closed last week on the sale of three office buildings in the Boston area — fetching nearly $1.1 billion in all — with the vast majority of the space destined for conversion to labs.

www.bostonglobe.com

 

[bigpicture7]

More conversions.

Crazy.
The Charles Park deal was announced in June and we have a thread for it:

Charles Park Office Redevelopment | 122 - 150 First Street | Cambridge

It seems this probably warrants its own thread (mods, otherwise feel free to move to East Cambridge Small Projects). Apparently, Alexandria just acquired the Charles Park office complex in East Cambridge for $815million and plans to do an office-to-lab conversion. Reported by BBJ and BldUp...

archboston.com

^Apparently Davis Cos. flipped that from a $416M purchase to a $816M sale in a year.

 

[tmac9wr]

Who else is already extremely tired of the word "metaverse"?

Whenever I hear "meta" used it reminds me of this clip from the TV show Community:

 

[jklo]

Neiman Marcus sells Natick Mall unit to retail redeveloper

Department store Neiman Marcus sold its 94,000-square-foot unit at the Natick Mall for $12.6 million to Boston real estate firm The Bulfinch Cos., according to real estate database CoStar.

www.wbjournal.com

Not sure which thread this should go in but noticed that the Neiman Marcus building at the Natick Mall sold to a developer for $12.6 million. Developer doesn't say what they are converting to but $13M that far out smells like lab space. There's apartments literally next door so I bet they will run into some opposition.

For some reason the owners of the mall don't own that building.