- Joined
- Sep 15, 2010
- Messages
- 8,894
- Reaction score
- 271
That vacant corner of the Lafayette Corporate Center was supposed to be a Kings-like venue, but the deal fell apart.
union square somerville is, for all intents and purposes, boston
That is a great transition between two buildings.
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?
That vacant corner of the Lafayette Corporate Center was supposed to be a Kings-like venue, but the deal fell apart.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Do they own the Verizon store ? Wish that would be redeveloped.
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?