Blue Sky Drive. Photo courtesy of Newmark

Conversions to R&D space could be the best option for suburban Boston office landlords facing a financial crossroads, real estate executives predicted at an economic forum focusing on the Metro North region.

“There’s a huge opportunity to refashion the stock of buildings going forward for clean tech, manufacturing and R&D,” said Kris Galletta, chief investment officer at Burlington-based developer Nordblom Co., at a Middlesex 3 Coalition event this week.

Leasing of traditional suburban office space has failed to recover in the post-COVID hybrid work era. And demand for office-to-lab conversions has evaporated amid the glut of life science availabilities and continuing increases in the local lab sublease inventory.

But an uptick in demand from the fast-growing clean energy sector points toward opportunities to find tenants looking for research space.

What else is on tap today?

• Aspiring Shop Owners: A group of 37 local entrepreneurs will receive nearly $4.6 million in grants from the city of Boston to help establish new retail businesses.
• Millennial Buyers Return: Millennials have surged ahead to become the largest group of homebuyers, marking a significant shift in the housing market’s demographic landscape, according to a NAR survey.
• Good Jobs Report: America’s employers delivered another outpouring of jobs in March, adding a sizzling 303,000 workers to their payrolls and bolstering hopes that the economy can vanquish inflation without succumbing to a recession in the face of high interest rates.

What can I look forward to?
Here are just a few of the things to look forward to in Sunday’s newsletter. Not a B&T subscriber? Change that here.

• Everyone talks about office-to-residential conversions as downtown Boston’s savior. But some architects and developers believe office-to-hotel jobs could be just as important, if not more so.
• When a company gets in trouble and breaks a loan covenant or goes into default, who steps in to help rescue the situation? Tom Desmond, and people like him.
• One year on, New England’s first mutual bank is doing well and continuing to grow its assets despite the challenging economic climate.