While other metropolitan areas of the country struggled to regain their financial and real estate footing last year, Greater Boston enjoyed a commercial building boom, with the city’s Seaport District and the Kendall Square neighborhood in Cambridge leading the way.
Among developers, a handful stand out as giants in the Boston area commercial real estate market.
These firms are investing in the area’s dynamic professional mix of life sciences, finances and technology, and betting on the willingness of young urbanites to support mixed-use projects that combine residences, offices, retail, restaurants and nightlife.
Noteworthy developers who have staked their money on Greater Boston’s future and dug their backhoes into projects that will change the landscape of Boston and Cambridge are:
Millennium Partners
In early 2012 the firm took over the reins to redevelop the demolished Filene’s site in Boston’s Downtown Crossing into a 625-foot residential tower, and is in the homestretch of building 256 residences at the corner of Washington and Avery streets in Boston.
Skanska USA Commercial Development
Just before year-end, the firm purchased a second parcel in Boston’s Seaport District. The company plans to build a 455,000-square-foot commercial building at the corner of Boston Wharf Road and Seaport Boulevard. That site is adjacent to another parcel where Skanska is partnering with Twining Properties to develop a 350-unit apartment building called Watermark Seaport that will include 25,000 square feet of ground floor retail.
Alexandria Real Estate Equities
The firm ended the year with an announcement of four new leases totaling 162,000 square feet at its 400 Technology Square property in Cambridge. The firm is currently building a six-story headquarters for big pharma firm Biogen Idec Inc., which is relocating its executive offices from Weston. The construction is the beginning of the firm’s planned Alexandria Center at Kendall Square, a $500 million, 11-acre lab, office and residential complex.
Biomed Realty Trust
Enlarged its Cambridge footprint last year by spending $119 million on the three-building, 287,000-square-foot Cambridge Place at 60 Hampshire St. in Cambridge. The firm then signed a deal for AVEO Pharmaceuticals to move to its operations into 126,000 square feet of space BioMed owns at 650 East Kendall St.
Samuels & Assoc.
The developer began site work last year on its Fenway Triangle project, an office, retail and residential complex that will bring Boston its first Target store at 1325 Boylston St., with Samuels preparing to demolish the former Goodyear garage and two other small buildings. Fenway Triangle will comprise two buildings joined at ground level. One building will have 230,000 square feet of office space, and the other will have 172 apartments.
