News
WHAT RECESSION?
November 15, 2011
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| While the slow economy has hobbled many CRE sectors, Cambridge?s Kendall Square neighborhood (adjacent to MIT and near Harvard) is popping with new life science construction—that's six buildings valued at about $1.1B, says Jones Lang LaSalle's John Osten. ?I view this as record breaking,? he said of the largest wave of development he's seen in his 15 years as a Cambridge broker. In the past few weeks, four of the pricy projects started construction (including 17 Cambridge Center, above). |
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| Three of the four recent starts are pre-leased and one at 150 Second St (above) is being developed on spec by Skanska USA Commercial Development. The submarket's so hot that that Skanska USA Development president Mats Johansson says he'sconfident that his $70M, 120k SF project will be leased before completion. Two buildings totaling nearly 500K SF are for Biogen Idec, which is bringing back 700 of its business-side staff that were moved out of Cambridge into a new build-to-suit in suburban Weston. But when new CEO George Scangos came on board, he decided that the collaborative nature of life science required the entire company to be in one location. |
