Keep your eye on the Cambridge market
All eyes right now are on the downtown Boston market, where rents are falling as the number of empty corporate suites swells.
In my B&T column, I write this week of fears the next owners of the Hancock tower, now facing foreclosure, will slash rents to fill up a growing mountain of empty space in the skyscraper.
But getting less attention, but possibly more vital to the Boston area’s economic health, is the lab and office market in Cambridge.
If downtown Boston is the old economy of financial services and law firm jobs, Cambridge is the capital of the new economy of biotech and tech firms, from fledging start-ups to international giants.
But the reports from the headquarters of our economic future are distressing.
In an excellent look at the state of the Cambridge lab market, B&T’s Paul McMorrow looks at how one of the hottest real estate markets in the country now has 1.2 million square feet on the market.
That’s about 17 percent, according to a recent report from commercial real estate firm Meredith & Grew.
Still, it’s not all doom and gloom, at least from the perspective of landlords. Much of the available space is either hopelessly out of date, or in new and costly research complexes.
Yet again, it’s never a good sign when new space goes begging.
Most of BioMed Realty’s 420,000 square foot, newly minted lab complex at 301 Binney now sits empty. And the real estate firm is now preparing to roll out an additional 278,000 square feet later this year at 650 East Kendall St.