Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

That vacant corner of the Lafayette Corporate Center was supposed to be a Kings-like venue, but the deal fell apart.
 
Agree those are all fun to do while drinking. ... but it occurs to me that those all also take up a lot of space that is going to seriously hit ROI given high rents and liquor license costs.

We should expect to see those wherever the new hipster frontier is now that Somerville and Eastie have gone full-Gentry....Chelsea? Lowell? Worcester?
 
chrisbrat said:
union square somerville is, for all intents and purposes, boston
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Agreed. But what I said still stands, there's nothing of the sort in Central Boston (Downtown/Back Bay/Seaport and environs). Union, especially without the GLX, is out of the way for people living in/staying in the downtown area. Hell, I live in Somerville (between Davis and Teele), and Union isn't convenient.
 
stellarfun said:
46525575111_0cb66aa048_b.jpg


That is a great transition between two buildings.
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In our office ...we call that "the art of not being there". Underappreciated, but very satisfying to do right.

cca
 
CSTH said:
Agree those are all fun to do while drinking. ... but it occurs to me that those all also take up a lot of space that is going to seriously hit ROI given high rents and liquor license costs.

We should expect to see those wherever the new hipster frontier is now that Somerville and Eastie have gone full-Gentry....Chelsea? Lowell? Worcester?
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It is sort of a paradox that because suburbs offer lower rents, youll find more innovative entertainment options
 
datadyne007 said:
That vacant corner of the Lafayette Corporate Center was supposed to be a Kings-like venue, but the deal fell apart.
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Yeah, so, about the owner of that "Kings-like venue":

https://www.buzzfeed.com/mattstroud/latitude-360

And this:

https://triblive.com/local/allegheny/12727860-74/latitude-360-owner-accused-of-bouncing-439-paychecks-turns-himself-in

Methinks DTX is much better as things are now, with the LCC vacancy merely persisting--instead of having to deal with the spectacularly toxic fallout from this "mini-Bernie Madoff" (as termed in the BuzzFeed article).
 
Globe: Massive empty store space in Downtown Crossing may be used for offices

The BPDA approved plans to turn the 75k ground floor of the Lafayette City Center into office space. A possible tenant is the state agency that handles worker's comp claims, which has to move out of the Government Center garage.

Tim Logan said:
Much of the building’s ground floor — about 75,000 square feet — has been empty for at least 15 years. The last sizeable tenant, an Eddie Bauer outlet store, closed in early 2016. Abbey and its brokers have struggled to fill the space. Among other challenges, the first floor is as much as seven feet higher than street level in places — a design quirk of the old indoor mall and its underground garage.
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Obviously retail would be better, but office is better than nothing. What I don't get is, if this place has been empty for the majority of two decades, why not just keep dropping asking rents until it fills? Low rental income is better than no rental income (but I suppose not better than office income).
 
JumboBuc said:
Globe: Massive empty store space in Downtown Crossing may be used for offices

The BPDA approved plans to turn the 75k ground floor of the Lafayette City Center into office space. A possible tenant is the state agency that handles worker's comp claims, which has to move out of the Government Center garage.



Obviously retail would be better, but office is better than nothing. What I don't get is, if this place has been empty for the majority of two decades, why not just keep dropping asking rents until it fills? Low rental income is better than no rental income (but I suppose not better than office income).
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I may be wrong but in certain cases it is actually advantageous for landlords to leave spaces vacant because then if the building loses money overall, it becomes a tax advantage.
 
awood91 said:
I may be wrong but in certain cases it is actually advantageous for landlords to leave spaces vacant because then if the building loses money overall, it becomes a tax advantage.
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But you can't write off more than you lose. Tax write-offs blunt the sint of losses, but they still aren't as good as gains.
 
JumboBuc said:
But you can't write off more than you lose. Tax write-offs blunt the sint of losses, but they still aren't as good as gains.
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Right but the losses in the retail space may be offsetting significant rental income in the rest of Lafayette Center. That offset may be worth more than the hassle of a lowball rental tenant.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Right but the losses in the retail space may be offsetting significant rental income in the rest of Lafayette Center. That offset may be worth more than the hassle of a lowball rental tenant.
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No use getting into a prolonged debate here, but the tax benefit of not receiving revenue is not paying tax on that revenue. Any tax savings a building owner would realize by giving up on revenue are by definition less than what the proceeds of that revenue would be. Operating expenses are written off before you get to taxable income, and that applies whether or not a space is occupied. It's not like you can write off expenses if the space is empty but not if it is full.

I suppose "it's just not worth the bother" could apply, but given current commercial asking rents and the windfalls that incumbent landlords have been raking down recently, I find that hard to believe. Market rents are so high that there is a lot of room to give before you get into "not worth the bother" range.

I suspect it's more that landlords consistently overvalue their spaces, and end up worse off than if they had just cut rents years ago. Brokers play a part in this too, as their mission is more focused on getting high rents and providing high comps than filling tough-to-fill spaces.

In other cases landlords want to keep spaces empty to facilitate redevelopment plans, but that's historically made sense for Lafayette City Center. The new office proposal changes that...
 
BeeLine said:
https://flic.kr/p/2cuzVFr
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^ I didn't realize that this renovation (One Milk St.) was carried out by the same developer that owns the One Bromfield parcel. Story (from yesterday) on One Milk here:
https://www.bisnow.com/boston/news/...refurbished-downtown-building-to-wework-99345

One Milk came out absolutely fantastic, contrary to the lousy street level proposal at One Brom. Now that Midwood's got a foothold in DTX, I wonder what we'll see next from them. I do not mean to stir the pot, but this article does mention:
The team has a local portfolio that includes One Bromfield, where the developer previously proposed a 59-story residential tower in 2016 but is expected to revise those earlier plans.

Read more at: https://www.bisnow.com/boston/news/...99345?utm_source=CopyShare&utm_medium=Browser
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bigpicture7 said:
One Milk came out absolutely fantastic, contrary to the lousy street level proposal at One Brom. Now that Midwood's got a foothold in DTX, I wonder what we'll see next from them.
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Not to belittle Midwood's achievement with the 1 Milk St. restoration/renovation in any way, but it was "only" that, a renovation/restoration. As opposed to a full-blown demolition/redevelopment, where a distinct creative vision is required (along with a lot more). Again, this is not condescending--all of this stuff is really complex and complicated and trying and costly, etc. I just think it's odd that you say "contrary". All things being equal, wouldn't we always expect a "simple" restoration/renovation to be executed much more gracefully than a totally new development proposal?

Also, FYI, Midwood's had its foothold in DTX for decades, believe it or not--their original 1 Bromfield St. proposal was in 2008 <you may recall?>, so at minimum they've owned this cluster for 12 years but realistically more like 20, I'd estimate (if not much more). It's just that they like to move very very very slowly and very very very under-the-radar. Which, per Bobby Brown, is their prerogative.
 
DBM said:
Not to belittle Midwood's achievement with the 1 Milk St. restoration/renovation in any way, but it was "only" that, a renovation/restoration. As opposed to a full-blown demolition/redevelopment, where a distinct creative vision is required (along with a lot more). Again, this is not condescending--all of this stuff is really complex and complicated and trying and costly, etc. I just think it's odd that you say "contrary". All things being equal, wouldn't we always expect a "simple" restoration/renovation to be executed much more gracefully than a totally new development proposal?

Also, FYI, Midwood's had its foothold in DTX for decades, believe it or not--their original 1 Bromfield St. proposal was in 2008 <you may recall?>, so at minimum they've owned this cluster for 12 years but realistically more like 20, I'd estimate (if not much more). It's just that they like to move very very very slowly and very very very under-the-radar. Which, per Bobby Brown, is their prerogative.
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I think Midwood is waiting until the city figures out the zoning there...too many litigating opponents to try and go for variances.
 
The Milk St restoration came out twice as nice as I had hoped. Not to kick out commercial tenants, but if this were residential I'd gladly live in DTX.

I would say given precedent that 1 Bromfield is a non-starter, but people also said that about redeveloping Filenes. Despite a sad recession-fueled holding period, Millennium Tower is hardly a NIMBY'ed down low-rise.
 
Do they own the Verizon store ? Wish that would be redeveloped.
 
DBM said:
Not to belittle Midwood's achievement with the 1 Milk St. restoration/renovation in any way, but it was "only" that, a renovation/restoration. As opposed to a full-blown demolition/redevelopment, where a distinct creative vision is required (along with a lot more). Again, this is not condescending--all of this stuff is really complex and complicated and trying and costly, etc. I just think it's odd that you say "contrary". All things being equal, wouldn't we always expect a "simple" restoration/renovation to be executed much more gracefully than a totally new development proposal?
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Good points; all I meant was that 1 Milk showed a commitment to carry out high-quality preservationism, whereas the previous 1 Brom proposal showed a willingness to starkly depart from the historic Downtown Crossing aesthetic/street level tradition. I perhaps gave more credit than necessary, but just wanted to comparatively highlight 1 Milk as a preservationism success story.
 
Boring, uninspired! Unless that Kiosk for Lovejoy Wharf is an ad, part of an interactive screen explaining the Liberty Tree history, this plaza is a lost opportunity.
 
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