I thought I needed to get my eyes checked when I read the latest bioSTATus report by Richards Barry Joyce & Partners and saw a 0 percent vacancy number along Route 128.

Looks like my eyes are OK.

Waltham and Lexington make up the core of the fast growing lab market on 128.

And yes, there is no available lab space in the 1.3 million square foot submarket, Brian Joyce, a spokesman for the firm, confirmed.

So have the Sox struck out in their long-standing efforts to reshape the once gritty neighborhood around Fenway Park to the fabled franchise’s liking? Or has the  team’s vision suddenly changed?

That’s the question lurking behind the development gold rush taking place around Fenway Park, one that is seeing every available lot scooped up by developers with plans for new apartments, offices and shops.

The Abbey Group wants to replace a now empty lot near Fenway Park – once home to the now demolished Boylston Street McDonald’s - with a pair of office and apartment mid-rises.

It follows a steady stream of new apartment towers being rolled out in the same area by developer Steve Samuels.

During the reign of Janet Marie Smith, the ballpark preservationist who brought ailing Fenway back to life, the Sox aggressively pushed back against Samuels and other would-be tower developers looking to build near the ballpark.

The team even succeeded in moving one proposal from Lansdowne Street to another site farther away from Fenway Park.

Why? Well the team was concerned this flood of development might bring in a flood of upscale neighbors intent on putting all sorts of restrictions on the operations of the noisy ballpark next door.

Clearly Sox owner John Henry wasn’t interested in pumping hundreds of millions into the renovation of 1912 ballpark only to find the team on the wrong end of a wave of gentrification.

But in the nearly two years since Smith was squeezed out, the Sox either have quietly reversed that policy or have been incredibly inept enforcing it. I think the former is more likely.

Whatever the case, the neighborhood around Fenway Park is fast becoming one of the hottest residential zip codes around.

So do upscale apartment towers and baseball stadiums make good neighbors?

Only time will tell, but so far so good.

That’s the word on Beacon Hill.

After months of closed door discussions with other state leaders, House Speaker Robert DeLeo is holding out hope that he can get a gambling bill passed and signed by the governor in July.

After months of battling it out over whether racetracks should be allowed to have slot machines, DeLeo and Gov. Deval Patrick, if not on the same page yet, are slowly getting there, State House insiders say.

By the way, both want casinos - it’s the racetrack slots they can’t seem to agree on.

OK, not to get too deep in the muck here, but it’s the kind of arcane dispute that Beacon Hill insiders revel in while the general public sits looking on, mystified and disgusted.

Here’s a quick synopsis. DeLeo has the politically connected Suffolk Downs racetrack in his district, while a key legislative backer is a big supporter of the Raynham-Taunton racetrack.

The fact is, DeLeo could get a gambling bill signed tomorrow if he just stuck with casinos, which Patrick clearly wants as well.

But, sadly, he probably can’t ditch his racing industry pals and remain speaker.

However, Patrick, while he’s talked a good talk about compromising lately, is only going to bend a little here. Frankly, he’s wary, as he should be, of doing anything that would look like a giveaway to politically radioactive racetrack owners, such as doling out lucrative slot licenses without some sort of bidding process.

The compromise that both leaders are looking at would authorize three casinos while putting a single slot parlor out to bid. Track owners would then be free to compete for it, letting both the governor and speaker declare victory at the same time.

We’ll see – we’ve had several promising casino bills collapse at the 11^th hour over the past several years. And there is certainly no guarantee that we won’t see yet another gambling bill fiasco at the State House come July.

Once known as America’s Technology Highway, Route 128 is fast adding retail to its list of attractions.

WS Development and National Development are rolling out the welcome mat to a range of retailers getting ready to sign up for the highway’s newest shopping complex: MarketStreet Lynnfield.

Whole Foods, Kings, and the Legal C Bar have all recently signed leases at the nearly 400,000-square-foot complex slated for development at exits 42 and 43.

Construction crews have begun infrastructure work on the site, with 128’s newest retail attraction set to start taking shape early next year.

It is the second major 128 retail venture for WS Development, which rolled out the Legacy Place lifestyle center at the junction of Route 128 and Route 1 in Dedham a few years ago.

Drop in for a pair of Boston Harbor Association panel discussions next week and find out. The waterfront guardian group will be celebrating the harbor’s miraculous rebirth while also taking a look at its future as billions in new development projects take shape.

On tap:

• Aerial photographer Alex MacLean will kick things off on the evening of June 14 with a presentation of his work, “Boston Harbor in Photos.” Former state environmental chief Doug Foy and Ken Greenberg, an internationally recognized urban planner, will follow with their own comments before opening up the floor to the audience. The event, to be held at the New England Aquarium’s Imax Theater, will run from 6-8 p.m.
• The waterfront’s future will be the focus of the discussion on June 15, to be held 8:30 a.m to12:30 p.m. at the Moakley U.S. Courthouse on Fan Pier. Michael Marrella, project director for New York City Planning Commission’s “Vision 2020”, and Brent Toderian, Vancouver Planning Director, will kick off the opening session. Roger Berkowitz, Legal Sea Foods, Alison Nolan, Boston Harbor Cruises, Mime Love, Utile Architecture + Planning, and Kairos Shen, Boston’s chief planner, will follow with their own observations. There will be an open mike session for public comments and suggestions, as well as time to network and chat over box lunches.

At least for now it has, suggests a new survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers.

The nation added just 259 new shopping centers – OK that sounds like a lot to me – in 2010. However, given we now have 108,000 malls across the country, that’s growth of 0.2 percent – the slowest since 1971, according to the ICSC, which relied on figures compiled by CoStar Group.

And so far, 2011 doesn’t look much better, with just 50 new shopping centers in the first four months.

Still, how many more malls do we need? After all, with 108,000 and counting, that is one for every 3,000 Americans.

It’s no secret there’s a big imbalance in political power in Massachusetts.

Boston and more broadly Eastern Massachusetts dominate the legislative agenda on Beacon Hill, leaving Western and Central Massachusetts battling it out as the underdogs.

The Hub has been the launching pad for many a talented politician over the years, but no, there isn’t anything special in the water.

But Greater Boston is where the jobs are, and, of course, where there are jobs, there is also economic power and, by extension, political clout as well.

More than 17 percent of all jobs in Massachusetts are clustered in Boston proper, or more than 600,000, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Add in the suburbs, and we are talking about 62 percent of all the jobs in Massachusetts and a fair number of all the jobs in New England.

Companies are edging back into the hiring market, both here in Massachusetts and across the country.

But the mood of the average consumer, even here in Massachusetts, which is supposedly leading the country out of its economic funk, is surprisingly glum, according to the Massachusetts Consumer Confidence Index, which is put out by Mass Insight.

The index dropped seven points in the second quarter, to 67. While it is still higher than last fall and last July as well, anything under 100 means state residents are more negative about the economy than positive.

In fact, 48 percent of Massachusetts residents polled believe the state is now on the wrong track, up from 39 percent in January. 

I never particularly thought the newsrooms I worked in over the years were particularly cutting edge.

If anything, the open design, with reporters and editors clustered within an elbow jab of each other, seemed retrograde at a time when Corporate America was in love with the big office.

OK, there were a lot of problems with the open office environment as seen in some of our local newspapers, from hopeless soiled carpets to cavernous spaces where natural light was hard to find.

But that open design – which, frankly, did help to get things done in a hurry on deadline – looks more to be the wave of the future for the office market.

The Millennials are poised to transform the design of a workplace that Baby Boomers, despite all the revolutionary changes they brought to society, have pretty much left unchanged from what the basic set up they inherited from the Mad Men generation.

Comfortable working wherever they can sit down with their laptop or mobile device, the Millennials are spurring a shift to an open office environment, one in which even traditional cubicles, with their high walls, are frowned upon.

Top local office architect Marc Margulies, in a recent talk to members of Massachusetts NAIOP, offered some general ground rules for the future of office design.

Among the key characteristics: Few or no high-walled cubicles, lots of amenities, and much higher density as well. In contrast to the traditional office with its 250 square feet per person, we are now talking a much smaller footprint of 165 square feet.

Other than Liberty Mutual’s new Back Bay headquarters, it’s going to be a very long time before we see another new office tower join the Boston skyline.

 Not so, though, down in New York, where developers are gearing up for a decade of skyscraper construction, one that is expected to add another 25 million square feet of office space over the next nine years.

To add insult to injury, hometown real estate giant Boston Properties and Vornado Realty Trust, which is sitting on half demolished Filene’s fiasco in Downtown Crossing, are leading the charge.

Boston Properties is expected to kick of this frenzy of tower construction with a planned, $1 billion tower at the corner of Eighth Avenue and West 55^th Street.

Vornado has an even more ambitious New York building schedule mapped out, with plans for two office towers totaling more than 4.3 million square feet. One would take shape across from Penn Station, while other would be built atop the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42^nd Street and Eight Avenue.

So why are office tower developers tripping over themselves to build in New York while giving the Hub a cold shoulder?

Well, Wall Street is booming again while Boston’s financial services sector is still licking its wounds. We have growth, but right now its centered in the life sciences and tech industries, which, in turn, are headquartered in Cambridge and along Route 128, not downtown Boston.