Greenway Residential Building | 55 India Street | Downtown

The building across the street is an absolute stinker. It's been done for years now and the ground floor space has never been anything but vacant.

The previous bars + outdoor patio were a much better use of that real estate.

I swear that some of the ground floor retail slots we see going up in Boston/Cambridge are solely there to show the approval authorities what they want to see in terms of ground floor activation / help building designs sail through the approval process. They are like sacrificial lambs. The associated developers have little care/intention of filling these slots. Yet this is not true in all cases, as some retail slots are aggressively marketed and filled relatively quickly. There's an ostensible discrepancy in how this is handled across new buildings.
 
I swear that some of the ground floor retail slots we see going up in Boston/Cambridge are solely there to show the approval authorities what they want to see in terms of ground floor activation / help building designs sail through the approval process. They are like sacrificial lambs. The associated developers have little care/intention of filling these slots. Yet this is not true in all cases, as some retail slots are aggressively marketed and filled relatively quickly. There's an ostensible discrepancy in how this is handled across new buildings.

Even if it's the case that they wouldn't otherwise build retail, I still don't understand why the owners wouldn't just lower the rent to such a cheap price that a commercial tenant would finally bite. Surely that must be better than no revenue.
 
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Even if it's the case that they wouldn't otherwise build retail, I still don't understand why the owners wouldn't just lower the rent to such a cheap price that a commercial tenant would finally bite. Surely that must be better than no revenue.

Probably a combo of already "dying" retail with COVID thrown in, and on the restaurant side COVID along with ridiculous costs for liquor licences don't help on the business side. On the building side - well, I think there are probably incentives to not fill it. Less of a headache/mess/noise/etc for residents (plus pest control for restaurants/etc), risk to get a tenant in that doesn't meet the brand level they want for the building which could hurt the image, etc. Plus, I would guess they have done cost benefit analysis where they are willing to eat the no rent months while waiting for someone who can pay their top rates (and sign a multi-year deal). Cause Also remember commercial/retail leases are usually for quite a number of years, so, if you sign someone you are committing to that for awhile.
 
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...along with ridiculous costs for liquor licences don't help on the business side...
Yeah, it's hard to overstate the impact of the current liquor licensing regime on Boston's bar and restaurant scene. The (lack of) liquor license availability is the marginal causal factor that causes plenty of establishments to close and also keeps plenty of others from ever opening.
 

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