Real Estate Deals

Should do a survey of what buildings are the best to work at.

Or have the best layout for the working environment.
 
New tenant, new outlook

Bain deal improves Hancock?s lot, signals change in office market

bain539__1273673305_5338.jpg

The 39th floor of the John Hancock Tower

By Casey Ross
Globe Staff / May 12, 2010

In Boston?s office market, there are tenants and then there are tenants like Bain Capital.

The financial powerhouse is one of a handful of companies big enough to change Boston?s office market in a single transaction. It did so yesterday, agreeing to move to the John Hancock Tower and take seven of its vacant floors.

The deal instantly changed the fortunes of the signature office tower, transforming it from an emblem of the problems afflicting the commercial property sector into a marker of the sector?s nascent recovery.

Real estate specialists said Bain Capital?s lease is the strongest indication yet of a stabilizing market after nearly two years of growing vacancies and steadily dropping rents.

?While we still have several months of recovery ahead of us, we have begun to see a number of tenants from across industries looking for more space than they currently occupy,?? said Gil Dailey, an executive director at the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, which represented both parties in the Bain deal.

Bain?s relocation, however, comes at a cost to another major landlord: Boston Properties Inc., which owns the nearby 111 Huntington Ave. building that Bain will leave next year. Executives with Boston Properties declined to comment yesterday.

Bain?s 500 Boston employees will move into floors 37 to 43 in the Hancock in the fall of 2011. The 15-year lease also includes an option for the company to take another 60,000 square feet in the 62-story building.

Neither Bain nor the Hancock?s owners, a joint venture of Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile Capital Partners, would disclose Bain?s rent. But a person with knowledge of the transaction who declined to speak publicly said Bain Capital will pay in the low-$50-per-square-foot range, slightly higher than the Back Bay?s average rent of about $48.50 per square foot.

The lease is a major boost to Normandy and Five Mile, which were struggling to fill large amounts of empty space after acquiring the Hancock at a foreclosure auction for $660 million in March 2009. The prior owner, Broadway Partners of New York, defaulted on some of its loans after losing several key tenants, causing the building?s vacancy rate to surge to 15 percent, more than double what its average vacancy had been over the past 10 years.

Bain Capital?s tenancy will lower Hancock?s vacancy rate to 5 percent. A spokesman for Normandy said only two floors in the building are still available.

Commercial real estate brokers said companies large and small are looking to add space in downtown Boston, a sign that employers are gaining confidence about their pros pects for business growth.

Ameriprise Financial is looking for 140,000 square feet, a 21 percent increase over the space it currently occupies, according to commercial real estate brokers, and the law firm Pierce Atwood is looking to triple its space to 18,000 square feet. Liberty Mutual recently added 80,000 square feet at 222 Berkeley St.

Large landlords are also busier.

At International Place, the city?s largest office complex, property manager Chiofaro Co. said the number of employees in the building has increased by 2,000 during the past year. The building is also drawing more interest from potential tenants, with 13 firms taking tours of office space last month, compared with just five in April 2009.

?The level of activity from a year ago is up substantially,?? said Ted Oatis, a principal at Chiofaro. ?In a very short period, the dominant characteristic of the market has become that companies are growing.??

Evidence of that growth has not yet showed in the official numbers, with the vacancy rate at top-rated buildings in downtown Boston at 12.2 percent. At the top of the commercial market, in mid-2008, the rate was 5.2 percent.

?I?d say now we?re seeing the first signs of a stabilizing market,?? said Paul Leonard of the real estate service firm Jones Lang LaSalle. ?A lot of firms are considering taking action on new space.??

Link
 
The New England Life Building was an isolated, dead block on Newbury Street used for decades as a single-tenant office building. Its rebirth as a mixed-use, multi-tenant property demanded a new name.

Naming properties is a really neat thing... it often irritates certain members of the public. It's a very delicate balance depending on what building you're talking about and how people connect historically with that building.

As for the West End - somebody here was "offended" that our client brought back the old name. I realize we can't please all the people all the time.

Think about it from our point of view... there were two options 1) Charles River Park 2) Something Brand New.

We recommended naming the individual buildings and retiring the Charles River Park name forever - too many negative perceptions about the property quality and what it stood for.

The natural question was "then what is the campus called?" and the natural answer was "does it really need a name?" A name is isolationist here. Naming it actually detaches it from the neighborhood. It's nameless in a certain manner, it's just... the West End.

So that's what we recommended.

In 2005, the Boston Globe advertised apartments and condos here as "Beacon Hill" "Beacon Hill-MGH area" "Charles River Park area" and "North Station/Beacon Hill". Just five years ago the name "the West End" was virtually non-existent in the Boston real estate vernacular.

Today, check for yourself. The West End as a name for this region is back. The T station recently renamed itself! Ads on craigslist today describe these properties as being in "Boston's West End."

Personally, I'm very proud of our work to bring that change about.

I think for so many people, that whole are is just toxic, and that's just that. If we had named it "Charles View" or something innocuous people would say "Hmmph. What these idiot ad people should have done is just name it what it is, the West End!"

A lot of what we do is thankless from the public, and I appreciate that. But - the Newbry was a massive success. The West End is still a gigantic success - incredible, record-breaking success. And that, in a nutshell is our job.
 
when did the Hancock add 2 floors,Its always listed as 60 stories since this Baine article today it's 62 floors?
 
I guess it all depends on how you define "success".
 
Statler - sounds like you're blaming the people of the 2000s for the things that were done in the 1950s/60s. We all hate Charles River Park and I even hate whatever new crap the BRA allowed the new owners to build (no offense to the ad guy or your clients). It's a shit development that forever ruined that part of the city.

But, I like bringing the West End name back.

The jury's still out on the Newbry!
 
^^Think of it this way. Say someone buys Locke-Ober and turns it into a Old Country Buffet. Then a few years later someone buys that Old Country Buffet leaves it mostly as is but renames it Locke-Ober.

In other words, don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
 
I see your point Statler, but...

The old ghetto of the West End was certainly not comparable to a "Locke-Ober"

Charles River Park when it opened actually was the most ultra-luxury thing Bostonians had ever seen - it wasn't Locke-Ober because it has no history, but it's like a very fancy new Morton's Steakhouse.

I think a better analogy is that there was a burned out diner there, somebody bulldozed it and put in a glitzy Morton's Steakhouse, and 40 years later, somebody facelifted the Morton's and named it in homage to the old diner that used to be there.

The old West End ghetto certainly has gained the halo of history. Visit the West End museum in West End place - sure it was a neighborhood that never deserved to be bulldozed, but it also was a pretty lousy collection of tenement architecture.

And yes, I am simply trying to be provocative with this post.

(Charles River Park is a horrible, miserable thing and so is its new iteration. It's just my love of being the devil's advocate that has me defending the destruction of the West End!)
 
Microsoft expanding its NERD center
By Herald staff | Tuesday, May 25, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com

Microsoft Corp. announced today it is leasing more than 100,000 square feet at One Cambridge Center to expand its New England Research and Development Center, which opened September 2007 at One Memorial Drive.

The initial expansion is expected to be completed this summer and the Microsoft Advertising division and employees from Navic, who have been based in Waltham, will move in, the company said.

Microsoft SharePoint Workspace employees, formerly with Groove, will move from the company?s Beverly office to One Memorial Drive at the end of June, the company said. The expansion will bring more than 500 Microsoft research and development employees together in the two nearby sites.
Click to expand...

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/technology/general/view.bg?articleid=1257216
 
Ohmygosh! Companies moving people from the suburbs to the city! Hooray!
 
Yes, moving to the Cambridge "Innovation District" not to the Boston "Imitation District".
 
filling up fast
http://bostonredevelopmentauthoritynews.blogspot.com/
Two New Companies Move into Boston's Innovation District
The announcement that Monster.com and Interaction Associates will launch offices in Boston's Innovation District comes just weeks after MassChallenge, the world's largest start-up competition, announced that the District will be home to its massive incubator. These companies will be joining a growing innovation ecosystem in the area, which includes anchor companies such as Foley Hoag, John Hancock Mutual Life, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and growing companies such as Gingko BioWorks and Double Tap Games. Moster.com will occupy 28,000 square feet and Interaction Associates 10,000 square feet at Seaport Center, which is located at 451 D Street.

Read More
Click to expand...
http://www.us.am.joneslanglasalle.com/UnitedStates/EN-US/Pages/NewsItem.aspx?ItemID=19412
 
451 D Street appears to be one of these beauties ... although I thought the innovation district was going smack dab into the marine industrial park?

Edit: Looks like it's the brick one. What the hell is the other one, which sprawls along a mile stretch of Summer Street? Looks like a cruise ship ran aground and someone added a door with cheap awning. There doesn't even appear to be a sidewalk in front of it.
 
The next big development district?? Guess the mayor was wise to give $2 million away to JP Morgan Chase to move here, just two years ago.

Pathetic.
 
Couldn't say it better myself. This is a worse attempt at an innovation district than Fan Pier. The mayor is truly crock full of shit on this one.
 
Condo contrasts

Prices downtown highest in decade, but sales are off
By Jenifer B. McKim
Globe Staff / October 29, 2010

The median price of a downtown Boston condominium hit a 10-year high in the third quarter while the number of sales dropped to a new low for the decade.

That?s the conclusion of a housing report set to be released today by the Boston company Listing Information Network that shows the median selling price of downtown condominiums increased 9.2 percent to $475,000 during the third quarter of 2010 compared with the same period last year.

Sales volume, meantime, sank by 24.5 percent in the third quarter compared with the same period last year. Only 677 properties sold, marking the smallest number changing hands during the third quarter over the last 10 years, according to a decadelong survey provided by the Listing Information Network. The private company tracks condos sales in 12 Boston neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill, Back Bay, and the South End. It doesn?t include the more moderately priced areas of Allston, Brighton, Mattapan, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain.

The juxtaposition of lethargic sales and an increase in median price is an indication that many of the properties selling are in the upper end of the market, not that home values overall are on the rise, local real estate agents say.

Indeed, median prices in the luxury condo market ? defined as full-service properties with valets, concierges, and other services ? swelled by 16.6 percent to $680,000 in the third quarter compared with the same time last year. At the same time, sales volume fell less dramatically than the overall market ? by 14.6 percent in the third quarter ? with 135 units changing owners, according to the new data.

?The higher end has picked back up, which drags the median prices a bit higher,?? said Michael DiMella, a managing partner at Charlesgate Realty Group in the Back Bay. ?Buyers are being real choosy.??

Debra Taylor Blair, president of Listing Information Network, said that the downtown market has largely held its values because of low inventory, which increases competition among buyers. There were 1,037 homes on the market in September compared with the 1,039 during the same month in 2009.

?We are not in a situation of [having a] glut of properties,?? said Taylor Blair. ?We are still in an appreciating market.??

John Ranco, a Boston real estate agent, said that even if the number of condos for sale has not changed much since last year, buyers are finding fewer properties that they want to purchase. Many homes have been on the market for long periods of time and are overpriced, he said.

?There isn?t a great selection,?? said Ranco. ?What is out there can be very expensive and tends to sell at a higher price than you would expect in a down economy.??

Link
 
Interesting ^.

Somewhat along those lines, how is the Claredon doing? We know W is bankrupt and 45 province is getting desperate, but haven't really heard anything about Claredon. Anyone?
 
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