whighlander
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I think I indicated what is the rule in the 128 area not the exception you indicate above, which is as yet unbuilt.
I recently worked on the Biogen headquarters, that they are smartly moving back out of.
I would shoot myself working in that environment. The cube farm on a 80,000 sq. ft. floor plate is awful and monotonous. The in house cafeterias and cafes and gyms are not enough to make me feel like I have options. These are more ways to keep you in the building. They are like the subsidized food at 245 Summer or 1 Financial. They are nice but they are really to keep the workers at their stations and take shorter breaks.
The development in Weston being one instance. The others along the highway are not much different besides when they are vacant looking for a mega tenant.
You can put lipstick on that particular pig if you believe in it. I know you're metro west so it affects you. The point is, that many people should not have been put there. Boston and Cambridge were big bucks (still are), and this was seen as a cheap solution to build the gigantic floor plates desired by some management. Awful location that forces thousands of people to drive to work, and typically to drive long distances because the population in many of these places does not support the influx of workers.
These corporations belong in metro areas with multiple public transportation options.
Seamus -- a lot of suburban mega-floor plate buildings came about not because of the desire for "cube-land" but rather because of manufacturing effeciencies or requirements -- for example the following local companies with "mega-floor plate" buildings:
Polaroid,
Raytheon,
DEC,
Western Electric,
Gillette,
Intel,
Astrazeneca
and recently Shire (site of the former Raytheon Hq in Lexington @ Rt-2/Rt-128 corner)
Many of the older big floor plate buildings have evolved into being the hosts for "cube-land" or telecom and server farms
However -- the real reason why many were built in the 1950's , 60's, 70's and 80's is that the "greatest / boomer" familes wanted to live in the suburbs -- keeping the city at arms length -- readily accessible if needed
If you had suggested in the 1990 - 2000 time-frame that a company such as Raytheon (with its origins in Cambridge) move back to Cambridge a la Biogen -- the leadership would have suggested that you get back on your meds