There was a time when the Charles River might as well have been Hadrian’s Wall as far as tenants were concerned.
Companies were fleeing Boston to save money. Most technology companies were rushing to Cambridge. Even Boston venture capital firms were leaving the city for less expensive digs in the suburbs, mostly along Route 128. Ask any MIT member and they will tell you that The Harvard Bridge spanning the Back Bay to Cambridge measures 364.4 smoots plus an ear. But the distance might as well have been in miles, from a commercial real estate perspective at least.
How the tides have turned.
In the last two years, a laundry list of Cambridge and suburban tenants have inked leases or are negotiating deals to move to Boston. The most recent example is Monitor – a longtime Cambridge corporate citizen – that is attempting to sublease its office in Cambridge in an effort to move to Downtown Boston. Then, there are the tech companies. such as SCVNGR, Zipcar, LogMeln, Brightcove and Communispace. Add these to the list, too: apparel makers Converse and Ministry of Supply; advertising agency Allen & Gerritsen; pharmaceutical behemoth Vertex and accounting firm CBIZ Tofias, to name a few. Cambridge and suburban firms are beating down the doors to cross over that dirty water and call Boston home.
Why, you might ask, is this happening? One reason is because larger technology firms like Microsoft and Google are gobbling up space in Cambridge with abandon as they expand operations. There’s simply not enough space in Cambridge for everyone. But Downtown Boston offers four times the office and lab space than suburban Cambridge for tenants of all shapes, sizes and industries.
Greenway/Seaport Scene
The once-enviable charm of Cambridge’s popular Athenaeum Building is being duplicated in many of the brick and beam office buildings lining the Seaport, the Leather District and North Station. The Rose Kennedy Greenway and the Seaport District’s evolution (including the advent of MassChallenge) have attracted younger, hipper and skilled workers. Lunch these days might mean bumping into a who’s who of entrepreneurs on a walk to Dewey Square outside South Station to the Clover food truck to buy a vegetarian chickpea fritter sandwich or to debate Os Gemeos’s controversial public street art displayed on the outside wall of a giant intake structure on the Rose F. Kennedy Greenway. Even traditional retail stores like Louis Boston and restaurants – from Flour Bakery to Rosa Mexicano to LTK – are popping up in the Seaport District, serving crowds made up of office workers and new residents.
For art lovers, why not meet at the ICA over lunch? Heck, how about watching the Red Bull Cliff Diving Championships off the top of an iconic building? You mean, professionals are diving off of an 89 foot platform into THE Boston Harbor? If I would have told you 15 years ago when I started this business that this is what you would find happening in the former Fort Point Channel, you’d call me crazy.
This is only the beginning, folks. Over the last two years alone, if you add the total square footage of 27 companies from Cambridge and the suburbs that have committed or are looking for a new Hub address, it’s enough to fill four Boston Convention and Exhibition Centers, or more than 2 million square feet. Trust me when I say that Boston’s attractions and options will only continue to diversify and multiply. Expect an even greater Cantabrigian and suburban exodus by more and more companies.
Welcome to Beantown.
Jeremy Roy is managing director of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank in Boston.
