The New Office/Lab Thread

I truly hate this. The BPDA is anti-urban. There should NOT be new LABS downtown - - - especially across the street from South Station????????

Why does the BPDA want Boston to be such a ghost-town outside of 9-5?????? If any neighborhood in Boston should be 24/7 it is Dewey Square/South Station.

This should be made residential or hotel.

www.bostonglobe.com

Boston’s first WeWork gets OK to change to lab space - The Boston Globe

The city’s first WeWork — and one that was, at one point, the co-working operator’s largest US facility — will soon be transformed into lab space.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
 
shmessy said:
...This should be made residential or hotel.
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Or kept as office:
www.businessinsider.com

Businesses aren't actually ditching the office, despite remote work

Only 5.5% of businesses shrank their office space, according to BLS data. But a lot of companies are looking to redesign with hybrid work in mind.
www.businessinsider.com www.businessinsider.com

Or (best in my mind) advance the trend of most/all new buildings being thoroughly mixed use, with a substantive residential component.
The only reason this one might get a pass (IMHO) from the latter sentiment is that it is actually a relatively small building to begin with. It might be quite impractical to subdivide up into commercial/residential and be left with highly leasable configs on the commercial side. But, generally speaking, I am a huge fan of substantive chunks of individual buildings going to a diversity of different uses.
 
In the post-pandemic future, labs are one of the few types of in-person work that reliably pays well. That maintains the commercial use, without the residential demands on city services (e.g. schools).
 
RandomWalk said:
In the post-pandemic future, labs are one of the few types of in-person work that reliably pays well. That maintains the commercial use, without the residential demands on city services (e.g. schools).
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PLENTY of space for labs in Allston, NorthPoint, Somerville, Chelsea,etc.

I guess all those suburban towns with T stations can now fully thumb their noses at the Commonwealth ever attempting to prosecute THIS. They have EVERY right to now say - - look what you approved across the street from South Freaking Station!!!!!!

www.bostonglobe.com

With a new requirement to build housing near train stations, towns brace for density — and drama - The Boston Globe

The measure is one of the most ambitious housing laws to clear Beacon Hill in years. But months later, many details — like how much housing, exactly how close to the T, and how much should be affordable — remain unclear.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
 
RandomWalk said:
In the post-pandemic future, labs are one of the few types of in-person work that reliably pays well...
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I'll believe this matters when/if we actually see a substantial shedding of square footage from (non lab) office-leasing companies. Yeah I get that everyone in commercial real estate is scared in the near term. But I still believe there is a longer-term transition to a higher-sq-ft-per-employee models that, despite remote work, is not substantively resulting in net loss of leased office space. I'm not the only one seeing this (see article linked three posts above), as well as (and especially):
hbr.org

Why Companies Aren’t Cutting Back on Office Space

As knowledge workers have shifted to hybrid, we’re not seeing an equivalent drop in demand for office space. New survey data suggests cuts in office space of 1% to 2% on average. There are three trends driving this: 1) Workers are uncomfortable with density, and the only surefire way to reduce...
hbr.org hbr.org
 
bigpicture7 said:
I'll believe this matters when/if we actually see a substantial shedding of square footage from (non lab) office-leasing companies. Yeah I get that everyone in commercial real estate is scared in the near term. But I still believe there is a longer-term transition to a higher-sq-ft-per-employee models that, despite remote work, is not substantively resulting in net loss of leased office space. I'm not the only one seeing this (see article linked three posts above), as well as (and especially):
Click to expand...

There does seem to be a ton of office-to-lab conversions going on. That being said, I think most companies assume that they will return to 2019 norms eventually... even if it takes another 2-3 years. And employees who reject this will be gone in the next layoff cycle.
 
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www.globest.com

Office Occupancy, Rents Rose In Majority Of US Metros | GlobeSt

Tech companies are contributing to the demand for office space, even as nationally, 45% of mathematical and computer workers work from home for at least some part of the time.
www.globest.com www.globest.com

Office occupancy rose in 84% of the 390 US metro areas tracked by Costar in the first quarter, led by Boston, and office asking rents are also rising in 98% of those markets, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Boston had the highest net absorption over the last 12 months, at 3.75 million square feet.
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With regard to national trends:
But despite that good news, about 110 million square feet of office space is still vacant, and it will take 11 quarters to reabsorb that space. Cororaton also predicts that asking rents are likely to grow at a “modest” pace (1% to 2%) in 2022 through 2024.
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[Bloomberg] Boston Tops Bay Area to Lead U.S. Life-Sciences Lab Construction

Everyone fully grasps the giant lab trend right now, but I found the stats in here incredible.

For now, the Boston metropolitan area, including Cambridge, is slightly smaller with about 32 million square feet (3 million square meters) of life-sciences space, compared with almost 34 million in the Bay Area, according to Colliers. But Boston has 62 million square feet under construction or proposed -- far more than the 18 million square feet in the West Coast metro, a report by the brokerage shows.
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Some thoughts:
  • The fact that we are about to triple the total lab space in a handful of years is seismic.
  • The rate at which our construction is outpacing the Bay is dramatic.
  • As someone that will be moving back to Boston from NYC (to work in law related to life sciences) I can't imagine what this will do to housing prices. I'm surprised residential construction hasn't exploded in response.
  • Does someone more informed have commentary on:
    • Does residential construction tend to lag demand rather than try to preempt it?
    • Is residential construction still reeling from the pandemic/supply chain costs?
 
At what point do we ask if there is demand for nearly 100 million square feet of lab space, of which, around 2/3 isn't occupied yet?

Brandeisian said:
  • As someone that will be moving back to Boston from NYC (to work in law related to life sciences) I can't imagine what this will do to housing prices. I'm surprised residential construction hasn't exploded in response.
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You and me both. If anyone has any extra cash laying around, I'm open to starting an Architect-Led Development Firm. ;) Seems to be guaranteed money at this point.
 
Zoning is the constraint on development everywhere. Only a few jurisdictions permit growth at any decent clip (Boston, Somerville) and even then it's far from easy to build. The stars are places like Everett and possibly Revere. We could build more if we had much more liberal zoning --- the developers are clearly there, we just need to not make them jump through thousands of hoops to build infill.
 
This is a link to a description of how much space per employee is required for a life sciences laboratory.
http://ifmasandiego.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/DGAIFMASDMarch2009FINALREV.pdf

Note that this presentation is over 10 years old.

That said, for the most part, the space needed is 300-400+ sq ft per person. This does not appear to include common areas, or space for the more extensive utility infrastructure associated with such buildings. But clearly, labs are low density employment spaces.

See also,
https://www.universitylabpartners.org/blog/how-to-find-laboratory-space-for-biotechnology-companies
 
Brandeisian said:
[Bloomberg] Boston Tops Bay Area to Lead U.S. Life-Sciences Lab Construction

Everyone fully grasps the giant lab trend right now, but I found the stats in here incredible.



Some thoughts:
  • The fact that we are about to triple the total lab space in a handful of years is seismic.
  • The rate at which our construction is outpacing the Bay is dramatic.
  • As someone that will be moving back to Boston from NYC (to work in law related to life sciences) I can't imagine what this will do to housing prices. I'm surprised residential construction hasn't exploded in response.
  • Does someone more informed have commentary on:
    • Does residential construction tend to lag demand rather than try to preempt it?
    • Is residential construction still reeling from the pandemic/supply chain costs?
Click to expand...
I think this is squarely a product of land use issues in Greater Boston. The concept of residential construction (beyond a few token projects) can be taken off the table in 95% of Greater Boston communities. In the communities you are left with that will selectively embrace residential (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, Quincy, etc.), multifamily is still intentionally segregated away by zoning from lower density residential areas and allowed in previously industrial areas or areas otherwise of a higher density character. Lab/office is almost always an allowable use in those areas and is almost always the highest and best use for those areas and, as such, land values are marked to that use making multifamily residential economically prohibitive.

Real solutions (such as expanding the 40B threshold to 15% or otherwise mandating by-right multifamily zoning) will never happen so the best we can do is similar to what Cambridge achieved with the Kendall MXD zoning which requires residential construction as part of any large commercial proposal. This won't stop our commercial : residential deficit but will slow the expansion of its growth.
 
From the Colliers Report cited by Bloomberg

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^^^ For Boston

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^^^ For the Bay area

https://www.colliers.com/download-article?itemId=47747a81-d4c8-4b0e-b36e-72a8ddffb436

The Colliers Report has similar table for other life sciences centers, e.g., Seattle, Philadelphia, NYC
 
52 million square feet is an astounding number for proposed square feet. Is there any breakout of that number / anyway to support it? I’d imagine that has to include large master plans (think Suffolk downs, etc.)…
 
Wow, Boston actually outdid the Bay Area for VC last year? That's gotta be the first time since they started recording VC that the Bay Area wasn't (far & away) #1.
 
bigpicture7 said:
I read that as just being for "Life Sciences"...
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Yeah after doing a quick Google search I think that may be the case. I saw one source that said overall VC in 2020 in the Bay was ~$12B and Boston was ~$8B but then I saw another source saying the Bay had >$50B in VC, so I'm really not sure if this is specifically for biotech or what it is...everyone seems to have their own measurement.
 
Max Power said:
52 million square feet is an astounding number for proposed square feet. Is there any breakout of that number / anyway to support it? I’d imagine that has to include large master plans (think Suffolk downs, etc.)…
Click to expand...
Looking at the Colliers data for other metros (besides the Bay area, supra) it would appear that the astounding number was not pulled out of the thin air, so to speak.. For example, for New Jersey, nothing currently under construction, 3,239,000 square feet planned. Seattle 1,390,000 square feet under construction, 376,000 square feet planned..

Regardless of what number you choose to use with respect to the number of square feet per employee for a lab building, the number of new employees who will work in the 60+ million sq ft of lab space being constructed or planned, is in the low six figures. Assuming a lab building has ten occupiable floors, the footprint for an additional 50 million square feet is over 1,100 acres. Assuming all new construction, and no conversions, some/much of this planned construction will be outside of Boston proper, Cambridge.
 
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