Spotlight: Northeast Multifamily
The athletic rivalries might drive you mad (unless A-Rod already did), but the region's got some multifamily stories worth keeping an eye on.
BOSTON: A dramatic neighborhood transformation
Alewife in West Cambridge has 1,545 units across six projects (within several blocks of one another) under construction, marking a three-decade transformation of an area that was once an industrial Wild West (forklift cowboys everywhere), city planning director Stuart Dash says. Motivators for investors: Cambridge's job creation building housing demand and the city's new zoning allowing residential developers to build bigger and decreasing the size of commercial projects, he tells us. (Alewife residential didn't make sense in the past because commercial rents were so much higher.) Exhibit A: O'Connor Capital Partners' $117M, 428-unit luxury complex at 80 Fawcett St. (Here's development manager Cabot Cabot & Forbes' Mike Boujoulian in the lobby, above.) Other recent Alewife investors include Clarion Partners, Hines, The Davis Cos, Hanover, Equity, and Griffith Properties.
NEW YORK: A contrarian approach
In a city like NYC, you can't make it to the top by following the crowd (or spending your life in the cronut line). Lightstone Group CEO David Lichtenstein saw everyone else is building condos, so naturally it was time for a 63-story apartment project on Fulton Street, he tells us. His reasoning: 12M SF of office (bigger than Downtown Atlanta) is under construction in the area, which translates to 60,000 new jobs, and zero rentals are going up. (Though building near Frank Gehry's 8 Spruce St is like walking into a party next to Brad Pitt, he jokes.)
PHILADELPHIA: Bringing Millennials to Center City
Multifamily's hot in downtown Philly, thanks in part to property tax abatements and housing demand, Dranoff Properties CEO Carl Dranoff (above) told us at Bisnow's Future of Center City Summit. But how does a city encourage Millennial migration and boost occupancies? (Artisanal coffee bribery?) It takes a holistic approach. Millennials need new companies coming in offering high-paying jobs, a variety of education options, and a solid school system for when they eventually build a family, Post Bros prez Matt Pestronk says. Post's latest reno: Presidential City Apartments on the city line. Dranoff's busy with a pair of big projects, too: SLS International on South Broad and One Riverside Place on the Schuylkill.
