Archive for the 'Retail Real Estate' category

Recently, Boston Realty Advisors' principal and founder Jason Weissman was featured in New England Real Estate Journal as well as Banker & Tradesman for selling two retail properties in Beacon Hill. The two properties were located at 125 Charles St. and totaled 2,073 square feet. The final sale price was $1.4 million to Charles Avenue LLC who was represented by Chuck Silverston of Prudential Real Estate. Weissman represented the seller, 125 Charles, LLC.

 At 9 West Broadway in the Boston Seaport, bordering South Boston and the Financial District, is a handsome luxury penthouse loft waiting to be plucked off the market. Unit 605 is nothing short than impressive. Attached with a price tag of a cool $1.899 million, it’s definitely a Boston luxury condo worth checking out. 

 

1. Paranormal Selling Points: Does MLS have a field for "number of ghosts"? - [Boston.com] Photo credit: Boston.com

2. House Call: A Marblehead house in peril dials 911. [WHDH]

3. Style Secrets: No Trump money? At least you can have hair like the Donald.  [Huffington Post]

4. Conversation Starter: Twitter for real estate? Take a look at this article and leave us a comment with your thoughts. Or tweet us! @bradvisor [Boston.com]

5. Follow Up:  Remember yesterday's story about the man who tried to open a plane door? He could probably use these tips on overcoming embarassment. [Huffington Post]

These are just a few insights into competitive advantage in Boston real estate.
 

Bed bugs are back, and may even be living in Luxury Buildings in Boston!

1. Receive a thorough inspection by a qualified exterminator, who will confirm the identity of the pest.
   
   
2. Seal cracks & crevices in walls and floors.
   
   
3. Secure loose wallpaper and eliminate other areas of insect harborage.
   
   
4. Properly treat or remove infested furniture.
   
   
5. Mark infested items that are thrown away so others will know not to bring them into their home and spread the infestation further.
   
   
6. Frequent laundering of bedding and clothing during extermination process.
   
   
7. Frequent vacuuming of carpets and steam cleaning of furniture and mattresses during extermination process.  

 

1. Never pick up free roadside furniture (it may be tempting, but it isn’t worth the risk).
   
   
2. When traveling, make sure to keep your clothing in your luggage and your luggage in the bathtub (this may sound strange, but bugs have a hard time crawling up slippery surfaces).
    
3. Bed bugs like warmth, they have even been known to enter laptops and DSL ports.
   
   
4. When looking for bed bugs pay more attention to wood and upholstered furniture. Bed bugs seem to prefer wood and fabric over plastic and metal. Pull back the sheets from the mattress and look for bugs along the seams or tiny blood spots on the mattress.  Also look along the edges of the box springs and in the seams of the bedding.  You might also smell a strong musty smell. 
   
   
5. Many pest control services employ the trained nose of a rescue dog (often a beagle) to sniff out live bugs and viable eggs. Make sure that you check out the dog’s credentials, however. There have been a few instances of people trying to pass off the family pet as a super-smeller. 
   
   
6. Bed bugs are not known to transmit any infectious disease. The bites look very similar to that of a mosquito or other blood-sucking insect. Some bites may be unnoticeable while others might turn into larger sores. 
   
   
7. To treat a bed bug bite, treat the area with antiseptic soap to reduce the infection. Don’t scratch!  If it becomes infected, contact your health provider.  

 

 It appears that Boston real estate developers are finally believing that the recent and expected successes of Boston luxury Condos and Boston luxury Apartments are critical to the viability of commercial development such as the blighted Downtown Crossing's "Filene's Project."

The Boston Globe Article  says it all - there is quite a bit of interest in the purchase of the Filene's development site from Vornado who stopped development due to the downturn in the market a few years ago.

This is not the case in all cities across the country and not so in all of Massachusetts or even all parts of Boston. In any case, we should be pleased that there are positive signs of recovery.

Posted by : David Friedberg, CEO - Residential Division

Boston Realty Advisors was yet again a recipient of CoStar's annual Power Broker award in the Boston commercial real estate market.

CoStar is the nation's leading commercial real estate information source.  From available space for lease to sales listings to comparable transactions and more, commercial real estate professionals rely on CoStar for it's comprehensive and current databasing intellience.

Each year, CoStar compiles all transactions completed, and awards the highest grossing brokerages in each market the Power Broker award.  This year, Boston Realty Advisors earned the title for the second time amongst Boston's best firms.

We are honored to recieve this title and look forward to earning it again in 2010.

The Boston Realty Advisors Commercial Brokerage team has a very unique knowledge and expertise in the Boston Office Market. If your firm currently occupies space or is looking to occupy space in the Greater Boston Area, please contact one of our Cambridge Office Space tenant representation specialists here.   

The Metro asked my thoughts on the retail and residential momentum in the Fenway area, here's the article:
 

A transformation has begun on the Fenway side of Boylston Street, and a proposed development that includes more residential and retail space at the old Howard Johnson Hotel site could make the area even more attractive to urban dwellers looking for a new spot in Boston to settle.

The proposal, which was submitted to the Boston Redevelopment Authority earlier this month, outlines the development of 1271 Boylston St., including 175,000 square feet of residential space, 170,000 square feet of hotel use and 4,000 square feet of retail space, according to a letter to the BRA from Weiner Ventures, the company planning the project. There would also be 280 underground parking spaces. Adam Weiner of Weiner Ventures could not be reached for comment on the project.

“When you have a ballpark of the home team actually in the city, as opposed to the suburbs, and you have as strong and die-hard a fan base as you can have with the Red Sox, the potential for a neighborhood to reinvent itself and build around the stadium is there,” says Paul Santucci, a real estate broker with Boston Lofts. “‘Great views of Fenway Park’ is a selling point and a viable marketing strategy here.” 
 

What else is new in the area?

The section of Boylston Street between Ipswich Street and Brookline Avenue has blossomed in recent years with the opening of Trilogy, a $225 million tower with more than 500 rental units and retail space, including West Elm, Starbucks and Burton’s Grill. A $125 million building at 1330 Boylston St. now housing Fenway Health Center, 215 apartments and additional retail space was also completed last year. And just around the corner is Landmark Center, with a movie theater, a health club and retail space. “We will see more residential momentum occur. There is a good amount of new construction, not just rehabbing of older buildings, so it gets a new, fresh look,” says Santucci.

 For More information about the residential real estate market near Fenway Park, contact me at paul@bostonlofts.com or 617-694-0004

Top 100: JOHN ROSENTHAL DEVELOPER/CRUSADER

Meredith Management’s John Rosenthal is preparing to start construction on the first piece of Fenway Center, a $450M, 1.3M SF project that includes a new commuter rail stop, residences, retail, offices, and parking adjacent to Fenway Park. He’s partnering with Sox owners on what will be one of the most ambitious projects to get started since the economic meltdown.

John, with Monika Butkiewicz and his wife Maureen Berkley, director of property management, look over a model and rendering of Fenway Center. It will have 1300 parking spaces, 330 residences, 370k SF of offices, 100k SF of retail, 30K SF of park and green space, bike storage, a day care center, and community space. “We are fully permitted and shovel ready,” he says. In this credit constrained economy, John has been securing debt financing from city, state and federal sources (including stimulus funds).

John also has a one-of-a-kind office in a converted 1700’s mill and some top office personnel who walk on four legs. We snapped him with Jon Hickok and Laura Hyer, with advisors Wiley and Tazzie. John has always brought a dog to work, so when Laura came on board to run STOP Handgun Violence (an advocacy group John started), Tazzie was part of the package. As a gun owning skeet shooter, John started SHV in ‘95 with the late Michael Kennedy (son of RFK). After Michael’s death, Vickie (wife of the late Ted Kennedy) asked to take his place. John says Mass. has the most comprehensive gun violence protection and the fewest gun fatalities after Hawaii.

John (center) and his in-house counsel Jerry Belair (on his left) met last week with a URS team seeking to manage construction for Fenway Center. Work on the $12M MBTA commuter rail stop is slated to start this fall. We snapped Thalia Schlesinger, Scott Bini, and standing Steve Moore, David Tremblay, Chris Watson, and Mathew King. The Architectural Team, and Carlos Zapata Studio, the design architects, are preparing construction drawings. Suffolk Construction is the design/build GC, while J.F. White is the civil contractor. John plans to get a guaranteed construction price for Phase I this summer. Including all the planning on the mixed-use project, he says “It took seven years to get into the batter’s box.”

Jerry is Meredith’s point man for solar energy projects. Here they’re holding pics of solar arrays installed in December atop Meredith’s HQ and some of its other properties: an office building in Springfield and rental apartments in Clinton and Ware. The Fenway Center MBTA station and garage will also have solar arrays enabling them to produce more energy than they use. John has championed solar power since the ‘70s, when he also campaigned against nuclear power, an effort he continued on Saturday with an anti-nuke editorial in The Boston Globe.

 Sourced:  http://www.bisnow.com/boston_commercial_real_estate_news_story.php?p=7379

Wait ’Til Next Year?

Tight pre-leasing requirements and a dramatic slide in rents and commercial values all but iced new construction in 2009, and at a recent NAIOP Massachusetts roundtable, Portfolio & Property Research CEO Bret Wilkerson predicted that office incomes would not trend upward again until 2011. That presumption, on its face, would seem to preclude all construction but build-to-suits (a quietly strong category in 2009).

However, Wilkerson and others have predicted a sharp swing upward in rents from 2011 to 2013. Wilkerson predicted a “phenomenally interesting and exciting cycle” beginning in 2011, and said Boston is PPR’s top market nationally for forecast rent growth until 2013. But unless the commercial financing environment evolves dramatically, and quickly, few new developments will be in a position to take advantage of that upswing. Eighty-five percent of Banker & Tradesman readers said they believe it is either not very likely or not at all likely that lenders will make commercial development loans available at reasonable terms in 2010.

In addition to the stalled Filene’s tower, two other high-profile Hub developments illustrate the harsh lending terms developers will have to navigate in 2010. Boston Properties had to swallow a tough recourse provision to get a club of five lenders to issue a $215 million construction loan for its Russia Wharf office tower in Boston – a project substantially pre-leased to Wellington Management. The loan amounts to less than half the tower’s $550 million construction tab. And when a group of three lenders refinanced the new Center for Life Sciences Boston, Biomed Realty Trust’s Longwood research tower, the San Diego-based REIT had to increase its equity position by $150 million, replacing a $500 million construction loan with a $350 million mortgage.

Retailer's Runway: 2009
This year's participants in the ICSC (International Council of Shopping Centers) Retailer's Runway were:

Auto Zone
Dollar Tree
Game Stop
Haloween Venture
Hobby Lobby
Kiddie Academy
Muscle Maker Grill
Planet Fitness
REI Sporting Goods
Rosa Mexicano Restaurants
Shoprite
Sonic
TD Bank
Wingstop Restaurants

The growth oriented segments in retail this year are value focused shopping, and appropriately so.  This line up is extremely reflective of this trend.

Retailer, Dollar Tree reporting opening 240 new locations in 2009 at the runway, having a total of 3,800 stores nationwide.  Their focus in
2010-2011 will be urban, in contrast to their typically suburban stores.

Sonic, the retro-future drive-in fast food restaurant reported opening
141 franchises in the 2009 fiscal year.  While this is down from their
2008 169 number, it still represents promising expansion.  Their current focus is on penetrating the northeast market.  Their new Peabody, MA location set the record for opening week revenue by more than 4 times the prior record holder.  With almost 3,600 locations across 42 states, the current #1 drive in chain in the U.S. shows promise.

TD Bank and Gamstop were amongst others with impressive growth statistics and substantial presentations.

For more information on retail real estate, please contact Jason Weissman here.

Stay tuned for more ICSC LIVE updates!