Cafés atop the Schrafft Center in Charlestown. Rooftop bars overlooking Boston City Hall Plaza. A name-brand restaurant at the massive Cross Point office complex in Lowell.
Owners of high-profile commercial properties are moving forward with plans to contemporize iconic structures, part of a strategy to attract tenants to fill large blocks of vacant offices. But it’s their emphasis on maximizing outdoor spaces and common areas that are central to creating a new image for these regional landmarks.
With Schrafft Center anchor tenant Partners HealthCare scheduled to decamp to Somerville’s Assembly Row in 2016, longtime landlord Flatley Co. of Braintree will be looking to fill nearly half of the 609,000-square-foot building. Despite its location on the Mystic River, the property has little connection to the waterfront three decades after it was converted from chocolate factory to offices. A large parking lot occupies much of the space between the building and the river.
Boston-based CBT Architects is writing the next chapter in the history of the 16-acre property. A master plan that would create a campus environment, with new links to the riverfront and Sullivan Square. Also under consideration: rooftop restaurants that would maximize Boston skyline and harbor views.
“To be able to use that space would be unbelievable,” said Haril Pandya, a CBT principal.
From Boston’s Financial District to the Route 495 belt, commercial landlords are putting a premium on upgrading open-air and common-area amenities. They see them as key to recruiting tech companies whose Millennial workforces favor non-traditional workspaces.
Mathworks’ new campus in Natick has an outdoor kitchen equipped with barbecue grills, refrigerators and seating for 800 employees. In the Alewife section of Cambridge, Equity Office Properties added a bocce court and fire pit last year at Intuit division Quickbase’s new offices at 150 Cambridgepark Drive.
Cross Point Turnaround
In Lowell, a newly-formed development company is engineering turnaround plans for another holdover from an earlier economic era.
A $10-million renovation began in August at Cross Point, the massive complex built as the Wang Laboratories headquarters in the early 1980s. The acquisition is the first for Anchor Line Partners, a Boston-based company formed last year by a pair of veteran real estate executives.
Andrew Maher, a former managing director at Equity Office Properties, and Brian Chiasson, a former Tishman Speyer regional director, acquired the 1.2-million-square-foot office complex for $100 million in July with backing from Farallon Capital Management of San Francisco.
Anchor Line is seeking tenants for approximately 350,000 square feet of available office space, one of the largest contiguous vacant blocks in the Boston suburbs.
The 10-month renovation program includes a new cafeteria with glass curtain walls, fitness areas, game rooms equipped with the obligatory foosball tables and Xbox systems, and conversion of a 500-seat auditorium into a modern meeting and multipurpose space.
The vision is a Google-like campus in a multi-tenant building, Maher said.
“All of these projects are designed to keep employees on the campus as long as possible to maximize informal interactions with their colleagues,” he said.
Anchor Line is in negotiations with a name-brand restaurant operator to occupy a 10,000-square-foot outbuilding previously used for offices. The strategy echoes that of developers at office parks in Burlington and Waltham. A Tavern In The Square restaurant opened in former office space at Burlington’s New England Executive Park in 2012, and a Tuscan Kitchen is arriving next spring. In Waltham, Boston Properties has leased ground-floor space to Posto pizzeria and Bonefish Grill at a new 230,000-square-foot office complex anchored by the Wolverine Worldwide headquarters.
Trading Leasable Space For Wifi Lounges
With common-area amenities growing in importance, “decommissioning” of leasable space is one option in large complexes.
After acquiring Boston’s sprawling Center Plaza for $307 million in 2013, Boston-based Shorenstein Properties is contemplating a major repositioning of the 717,128-square-foot office and retail complex on Cambridge Street.
The project could involve converting some of the ground-level retail – now occupied by stores such as 7-Eleven, Avis car rental and CVS, into a wifi lounge, said CBT Architects’ Pandya.
More ambitious plans are in the works for the 20-foot-wide parapet that runs along the ninth floor of the 900-foot-long curving façade overlooking City Hall Plaza. Currently unused, it offers an opportunity to create outdoor gardens, rooftop bars and areas for live entertainment and political events.
“It would feel like the High Line (linear park) in New York: this great continuous green space which could be a lot of fun for the city,” Pandya said. “We want it to be a go-to destination and not a go-through destination.”
Email: sadams@thewarrengroup.com
