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Zelle P2P Goes Mainstream You Can Take It To – And From – The Bank
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THERE’S LIFE IN THE SUBURBS
Boylston Properties’ 185,000-square-foot speculative industrial conversion Linx on Watertown’s Arsenal Street landed its first tenant with a 45,000-square-foot lease by Kendall Square life science startup C4 Therapeutics.
BY CHRISTINA P. O’NEILL SPECIAL TO BANKER & TRADESMAN
he nation’s largest banks have moved into the person-to-person payment sphere with the rollout of Zelle, a bankowned mobile application that allows customers to make P2P payments without leaving the protection of the data center of their financial institution. It’s positioned as a direct competitor to Venmo and it’s reportedly a lot more efficient at processing transactions. The launch, which began in 2016, is already present or soon will be in the mobile banking apps of more than 30 participating financial institutions over the next 12 months on a rolling basis, according to Early Warning, Zelle’s vendor. That would take into account more than 86 million U.S mobile banking consumers, Zelle said in a statement. A standalone app is on its way, according to a report last month from Business Insider.com. “Our goal is to revolutionize how U.S. consumers and businesses send and receive money by providing a network that exists
LAB, CREATIVE OFFICE SPACE SPUR INVESTMENT
Continued on Page 10
HUMBLE HOMES
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BY STEVE ADAMS | BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
emand for next-generation office space and life science R&D facilities is generating a wave of speculative redevelopments in Boston’s western suburbs and a string of recent success stories luring growing companies from Cambridge and elsewhere along the Route 128 belt. Refreshed office space, speculative lab projects and office-to-lab conversions are driving development activity in the suburban market. And the strategy appears to be paying off: Boston have suburbs tallied over 700,000 square feet of positive absorption year-to-date, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s latest MarketBeat report, rebounding from negative 500,000 square feet in the first half of 2016. Repositioning projects such as shoemaker Clarks North America’s new headquarters at former Polaroid lab space in Waltham and Griffith Properties’ office-to-lab conversion at 275 Second Ave. in Waltham have dispelled the familiar narrative of thriving downtown markets and stagnant suburbs. Following the departure of office tenant IBM Rational Software, Boston-based Griffith Properties received the bulk of interest from life science companies to fill a 100,000-square-foot office building at 20 Maguire Road in Lexington, which Griffith owns in a
partnership with Walton Street Capital. Griffith is seeking permits for a lab conversion project expected to be ready for tenants by mid2017, Chief Investment Officer Marci Griffith Loeber said. The firm plans to market lab space in the high $30s per square foot on a triple-net basis, less than half of the going rate in the East Cambridge life science hub. “We have a tremendous amount of interest in lab space both from the suburbs and Cambridge tenants,” Loeber said, citing the property’s location near Lexington’s Hartwell Avenue life science cluster. Griffith is seeking to duplicate its recent success at 266 Second Ave. in Waltham, where it converted half of the 96,695-square-foot building into lab space in its role as operator on behalf of owner Rockwood Capital. Three lab tenants, including ImmuneXcite, filled the remaining space in less than a year, Loeber said, bringing it up to 100 percent occupancy in May. The property is under agreement to an undisclosed buyer, Loeber said.
From Industrial Space To R&D Chic With only 36,000 square feet of lab space available in Cambridge’s Alewife submarket, according to Cushman & Wakefield research, developers are Continued on Page 3
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Classified Sections ������������������������������������������������� 11
Commercial & Industrial ������������������������������������������ 3
Residential ��������������������������������������������������������������� 8
Women Of Fire ������������������������������������������������������� B1
By The Numbers ������������������������������������������������������� 6
Banking & Lending ������������������������������������������������� 10
Records Section ������������������������������������������������������ C1
Tiny Houses: A Lifestyle, Not An Economic Choice Expenses Upfront Yield Savings Down The Road
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BY JIM MORRISON BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
iny homes are nothing new in Massachusetts. After all, Henry David Thoreau built his 150-square-foot home in Walden Woods with $28.12 worth of materials back in 1845. It may be the trends of Baby Boomers retiring and downsizing, the heightened focus on energy efficiency, and skyrocketing housing costs are combining to create a tiny market for tiny homes. In this case, “tiny homes” refer to stationary houses built on foundations on privately owned land. Many tiny homes are built on axles, so they can be easily moved from place to place. These are different from mobile homes, which aren’t, in fact, very mobile at all. Tiny homes built on axles are considered RVs and not real estate. StaContinued on Page 8