5 ms·

Boston built a ton of lab buildings. Now many are empty

32 points by ilamont 3y ago

black_13 3y ago
Turn to housing
- ssl-3 3y ago
  That sounds easy, but it's expensive and difficult. The infrastructure (plumbing, HVAC, electric, egress) needs of office and other commercial spaces are very different compared to what residential units need. So, for example: Bathrooms. While there may have been one or two [sets of] bathrooms per section of floor in commercial use, and this worked fine, residential tenants want at least one full bathroom all for themselves in their relatively small 1, 2, or 3-bedroom spread. Or kitchens: What might have been a few limited break-room-type kitchenettes per floor needs to be a full kitchen, per-unit. Those pipes need to live somewhere. (And this can be accomplished, but it's a somewhat monumental task to design and implement.)
  - gostintheshell 3y ago
    Given prices, I think a lot of singles who don't spend much time at hone would rather have a dorm like technical residence in an ideal location. It is of course illegal to have a boarding house in the Boston area because it would lead to a plague, of lower real estate prices.
    - ssl-3 3y ago
      That means even higher density, which means even more problems with things like HVAC and egress: Certainly, an independent adult -- even one who is willing to live with communal bathrooms -- would like to set their own temperature and not die in a fire. There's no free ride here, I don't think. Again, they're solvable problems but they're expensive to solve.
      - gostintheshell 3y ago
        I hope they learned something and aren't using forced hot air.. I don't really think the challenges are that high if lab space was designed poorly it is still better than typical Boston area residential, which certainly won't let you turn down the heat. As for fire safety and egresses it basically begins outside the unit, so a hotel or boarding house and a office space actually have the same egress rules while a 3 bedroom is a death trap.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
alephnerd 3y ago
A similar issue is happening in San Francisco in Mission Bay, who's builders are the exact same as those in Kendall Square
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
GenerWork 3y ago
Commercial real estate is still getting absolutely destroyed by Covid repercussions. I honestly don't know how things will turn around unless we get a bad recession where employers say "Hey, if you want a job, come into the office 5 days a week".
- djohnston 3y ago
  In commercial real estate in general it’s unsurprising, but you can’t do lab work from home. The article indicates that labs are suffering from an industry slowdown, which is a bit different than everyone wfh.
  - Grimblewald 3y ago
    could be the terrible working conditions you're often subjected to in wet labs. I am / was in chemistry, but have put a lot of effort into transitioning into a more programming / data heavy role to avoid the bullshit, lack of safety standards, and poor pay that comes with doing work in wet labs. The problem is the same everywhere at the moment, no one wants to pay for good work anymore, but areas like research and wet labs which are dangerous and thankless jobs in the first place, this has the added problem of employers having been coasting on peoples passion and dedication these last few decades already, so this extra burden is simply too much for most. The dam has burst and people are simple leaving, and it would be too little to simple 'go back to how it was'. Even paying more than what was being paid at this stage would be too little, once you've started re-spec'ing, why would you stop?
mlazos 3y ago
Honestly I’m tired of landlords expecting good returns, I’m glad they had this wake up call that yes, in fact there is risk in every investment. What really irks me is when they prefer vacancy to lowering rents.
- avidiax 3y ago
  > they prefer vacancy to lowering rents. My understanding is that this results from the terms of commercial loans. If they were to sign a lease at a lower rate, they'd have to lower the appraised value of the real estate, which would blow up the loan. But offering "concessions" like free months of rent, or having apparently any rate of vacancy doesn't affect the loan.
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    I think the same sentiment applies though. Banks rubber-stamped loans for commercial real estate developers because they thought it was free money. Now they know it isn't.
lsllc 3y ago
I don' think it's a bad gamble, it'll just take longer then expected to lease all of this. IMHO, I think the Boston "tech hub" has pivoted in the last 20 years to biotech/life sciences. Kendall in particular seems to have more and more biotech, multiple new buildings around the Science Museum and Assembly Sq. Even Rt 128 "the computer commute" is ... well is far less techy these days (no more DEC, Prime). Who are the big s/w companies still based in Boston? EMC, Akamai? ...? My opinion is that the pivot is driven by non-competes [without a much needed CA style prohibition]. Long ago you needed expensive computer time or pricy tools to write software, but these days you don't need a VAX to write software or an expensive MSDN subscription provided by your employer. You can do it on your personal laptop at home with open source tools -- your employer's non-competes significantly stifle this sort of innovation. However, Biotech and life sciences needs expensive lab space, specialized plumbing and infrastructure and complex equipment -- you can't really cook up a new drug in your kitchen on the weekends as you might with some new software idea. So I think there's still a ton of super-smart people coming out of the universities in the Boston area, but the software folks are being drawn elsewhere (Silicon Valley), whilst the biotech ones stay because of the inertia here.
- brunellus 3y ago
  Agreed. Non-competes always seemed incongruous to the tech/startup zeitgeist of the last 10-15 years. But just by walking around in Boston, one can simply look at the architecture and infer it’s a parochial, old school little city. Power struggles abound, and corporations tend to dominate there. Increasingly I have come to believe that managers learned to represent their tech companies as “startups” in order to justify disorganization and less than stellar salaries.
  - lsllc 3y ago
    Exactly, while the legislature let EMC "lobby away" the attempts to meaningfully reform non-competes, Gov. Healy wonders why the AI lead has slipped from the state and is now forming an AI "task force": https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intelligence-strategic-task-force/ https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intell... “Boston, in general, was one of the leading spots for AI,” said task force member Usama Fayyad, who is Executive Director of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University. “For I would say a couple of decades, in the very beginnings of artificial intelligence.” “The governor was saying, ‘Hey, why have we let this lead slip away from our state and how do we bring it back in a big way?’ I think the state is going to identify areas of strength where we can have distinction,” he said.
screye 3y ago
Boston is in a mildly risky position right now. Boston's main draws are slowly becoming less appealing. We seem to have reached peak education a few years ago, and I don't see it growing much more in the next decade. Their public k12 schools are still amazing, but that's more so a testament to the outer suburbs than the core urban area. Public transportation was a huge draw, and it's in dire straits. The 'next tech hub' thing never took off, with Austin, LIC, NJ & Atlanta growing faster than Boston. Biotech is doing great, but as it moves from academia to industry....I'm seeing a slow siphoning of biotech talent into the bay area. The biggest issue is how well NYC is doing. Boston was always a great way to experience NYC-lite. But the mass gentrification of LIC, Brooklyn and Jersey City has now made it possible to have NYC-lite within NYC itself. So it makes Boston less appealing. As far as cities go, Boston is still doing amazing. But I am going to change my optimism around it from 'best positioned to see massive growth' to 'good city that does 1 or 2 things well'. Thankfully for Boston their problems seem solvable. Give incentives to MIT/Harvard grads to set up startups locally. Make it easier to build housing and fix public transport....the city will be back to #1 on my highest growth potential list. P.S: I say this in jest, but make DeSantis ship a few more migrants up to new england. The Mexican food scene is trash and needs help.
- alephknoll 3y ago
  > Boston was always a great way to experience NYC-lite. Since when? Who goes to boston for the 'nyc-lite' experience? > But the mass gentrification of LIC, Brooklyn and Jersey City has now made it possible to have NYC-lite within NYC itself. What are you talking about? LIC and Brooklyn are part of NYC. It is the NYC experience. Are you confusing NYC with Manhattan? > So it makes Boston less appealing. Nobody moves to boston for a NYC-lite experience. Have you ever been to NYC or Boston? > P.S: I say this in jest, but make DeSantis ship a few more migrants up to new england. The Mexican food scene is trash and needs help. What?
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    > Since when? Who goes to boston for the 'nyc-lite' experience? I’ve lived in both. This is a thing. NYC fans will say that nothing compares and only NYC is NYC, but people outside it do think of Boston as a baby NYC. It has a ton of similarities to their urban fabric, but it’s just saw smaller. It has similar architecture, people, weather, etc. it’s a very walkable city, with a vibrant cultural scene. It’s just… less than NYC. Less food choice, less cultural options, smaller, less transit, less jobs, less people, etc.
mc32 3y ago
Once rates go down and borrowing becomes easy again, I think they will see Biotech tenants move in. I think lots of people who would start something are staying put because they can't raise money at reasonable terms now. Same As SSF.

32 points by ilamont 3y ago

black_13 3y ago

Turn to housing

ssl-3 3y ago
That sounds easy, but it's expensive and difficult. The infrastructure (plumbing, HVAC, electric, egress) needs of office and other commercial spaces are very different compared to what residential units need. So, for example: Bathrooms. While there may have been one or two [sets of] bathrooms per section of floor in commercial use, and this worked fine, residential tenants want at least one full bathroom all for themselves in their relatively small 1, 2, or 3-bedroom spread. Or kitchens: What might have been a few limited break-room-type kitchenettes per floor needs to be a full kitchen, per-unit. Those pipes need to live somewhere. (And this can be accomplished, but it's a somewhat monumental task to design and implement.)
- gostintheshell 3y ago
  Given prices, I think a lot of singles who don't spend much time at hone would rather have a dorm like technical residence in an ideal location. It is of course illegal to have a boarding house in the Boston area because it would lead to a plague, of lower real estate prices.
  - ssl-3 3y ago
    That means even higher density, which means even more problems with things like HVAC and egress: Certainly, an independent adult -- even one who is willing to live with communal bathrooms -- would like to set their own temperature and not die in a fire. There's no free ride here, I don't think. Again, they're solvable problems but they're expensive to solve.
    - gostintheshell 3y ago
      I hope they learned something and aren't using forced hot air.. I don't really think the challenges are that high if lab space was designed poorly it is still better than typical Boston area residential, which certainly won't let you turn down the heat. As for fire safety and egresses it basically begins outside the unit, so a hotel or boarding house and a office space actually have the same egress rules while a 3 bedroom is a death trap.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

alephnerd 3y ago

A similar issue is happening in San Francisco in Mission Bay, who's builders are the exact same as those in Kendall Square

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

GenerWork 3y ago

Commercial real estate is still getting absolutely destroyed by Covid repercussions. I honestly don't know how things will turn around unless we get a bad recession where employers say "Hey, if you want a job, come into the office 5 days a week".

djohnston 3y ago
In commercial real estate in general it’s unsurprising, but you can’t do lab work from home. The article indicates that labs are suffering from an industry slowdown, which is a bit different than everyone wfh.
- Grimblewald 3y ago
  could be the terrible working conditions you're often subjected to in wet labs. I am / was in chemistry, but have put a lot of effort into transitioning into a more programming / data heavy role to avoid the bullshit, lack of safety standards, and poor pay that comes with doing work in wet labs. The problem is the same everywhere at the moment, no one wants to pay for good work anymore, but areas like research and wet labs which are dangerous and thankless jobs in the first place, this has the added problem of employers having been coasting on peoples passion and dedication these last few decades already, so this extra burden is simply too much for most. The dam has burst and people are simple leaving, and it would be too little to simple 'go back to how it was'. Even paying more than what was being paid at this stage would be too little, once you've started re-spec'ing, why would you stop?

mlazos 3y ago

Honestly I’m tired of landlords expecting good returns, I’m glad they had this wake up call that yes, in fact there is risk in every investment. What really irks me is when they prefer vacancy to lowering rents.

avidiax 3y ago
> they prefer vacancy to lowering rents. My understanding is that this results from the terms of commercial loans. If they were to sign a lease at a lower rate, they'd have to lower the appraised value of the real estate, which would blow up the loan. But offering "concessions" like free months of rent, or having apparently any rate of vacancy doesn't affect the loan.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  I think the same sentiment applies though. Banks rubber-stamped loans for commercial real estate developers because they thought it was free money. Now they know it isn't.

lsllc 3y ago

I don' think it's a bad gamble, it'll just take longer then expected to lease all of this. IMHO, I think the Boston "tech hub" has pivoted in the last 20 years to biotech/life sciences. Kendall in particular seems to have more and more biotech, multiple new buildings around the Science Museum and Assembly Sq. Even Rt 128 "the computer commute" is ... well is far less techy these days (no more DEC, Prime). Who are the big s/w companies still based in Boston? EMC, Akamai? ...? My opinion is that the pivot is driven by non-competes [without a much needed CA style prohibition]. Long ago you needed expensive computer time or pricy tools to write software, but these days you don't need a VAX to write software or an expensive MSDN subscription provided by your employer. You can do it on your personal laptop at home with open source tools -- your employer's non-competes significantly stifle this sort of innovation. However, Biotech and life sciences needs expensive lab space, specialized plumbing and infrastructure and complex equipment -- you can't really cook up a new drug in your kitchen on the weekends as you might with some new software idea. So I think there's still a ton of super-smart people coming out of the universities in the Boston area, but the software folks are being drawn elsewhere (Silicon Valley), whilst the biotech ones stay because of the inertia here.

brunellus 3y ago
Agreed. Non-competes always seemed incongruous to the tech/startup zeitgeist of the last 10-15 years. But just by walking around in Boston, one can simply look at the architecture and infer it’s a parochial, old school little city. Power struggles abound, and corporations tend to dominate there. Increasingly I have come to believe that managers learned to represent their tech companies as “startups” in order to justify disorganization and less than stellar salaries.
- lsllc 3y ago
  Exactly, while the legislature let EMC "lobby away" the attempts to meaningfully reform non-competes, Gov. Healy wonders why the AI lead has slipped from the state and is now forming an AI "task force": https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intelligence-strategic-task-force/ https://whdh.com/news/gov-healey-assembles-artificial-intell... “Boston, in general, was one of the leading spots for AI,” said task force member Usama Fayyad, who is Executive Director of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University. “For I would say a couple of decades, in the very beginnings of artificial intelligence.” “The governor was saying, ‘Hey, why have we let this lead slip away from our state and how do we bring it back in a big way?’ I think the state is going to identify areas of strength where we can have distinction,” he said.

screye 3y ago

Boston is in a mildly risky position right now. Boston's main draws are slowly becoming less appealing. We seem to have reached peak education a few years ago, and I don't see it growing much more in the next decade. Their public k12 schools are still amazing, but that's more so a testament to the outer suburbs than the core urban area. Public transportation was a huge draw, and it's in dire straits. The 'next tech hub' thing never took off, with Austin, LIC, NJ & Atlanta growing faster than Boston. Biotech is doing great, but as it moves from academia to industry....I'm seeing a slow siphoning of biotech talent into the bay area. The biggest issue is how well NYC is doing. Boston was always a great way to experience NYC-lite. But the mass gentrification of LIC, Brooklyn and Jersey City has now made it possible to have NYC-lite within NYC itself. So it makes Boston less appealing. As far as cities go, Boston is still doing amazing. But I am going to change my optimism around it from 'best positioned to see massive growth' to 'good city that does 1 or 2 things well'. Thankfully for Boston their problems seem solvable. Give incentives to MIT/Harvard grads to set up startups locally. Make it easier to build housing and fix public transport....the city will be back to #1 on my highest growth potential list. P.S: I say this in jest, but make DeSantis ship a few more migrants up to new england. The Mexican food scene is trash and needs help.

alephknoll 3y ago
> Boston was always a great way to experience NYC-lite. Since when? Who goes to boston for the 'nyc-lite' experience? > But the mass gentrification of LIC, Brooklyn and Jersey City has now made it possible to have NYC-lite within NYC itself. What are you talking about? LIC and Brooklyn are part of NYC. It is the NYC experience. Are you confusing NYC with Manhattan? > So it makes Boston less appealing. Nobody moves to boston for a NYC-lite experience. Have you ever been to NYC or Boston? > P.S: I say this in jest, but make DeSantis ship a few more migrants up to new england. The Mexican food scene is trash and needs help. What?
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  > Since when? Who goes to boston for the 'nyc-lite' experience? I’ve lived in both. This is a thing. NYC fans will say that nothing compares and only NYC is NYC, but people outside it do think of Boston as a baby NYC. It has a ton of similarities to their urban fabric, but it’s just saw smaller. It has similar architecture, people, weather, etc. it’s a very walkable city, with a vibrant cultural scene. It’s just… less than NYC. Less food choice, less cultural options, smaller, less transit, less jobs, less people, etc.

mc32 3y ago

Once rates go down and borrowing becomes easy again, I think they will see Biotech tenants move in. I think lots of people who would start something are staying put because they can't raise money at reasonable terms now. Same As SSF.