MetroWest office market hits low versus hot Boston neighborhoods
Photo | Grant Welker
Westborough Office Park lists existing office space for lease, as well as developable land.
Photo | Grant Welker
The medical optics firm Olympus is building a 150,000-square-foot office in Westborough just off the intersection of Route 9 and I-495.
Photo | Grant Welker
In Westborough, eClinicalWorks has listed for lease a vacant 193,000-square-foot office.
Photo | Grant Welker
The drugmaker Sanofi has a major presence in Westborough, but the offices' future are in doubt as the company builds a 900,000-square-foot office in East Cambridge to consolidate much of its Boston area operations.
As growth in the Greater Boston office market has heated up in recent years, higher and higher rents have followed, particularly in places like Cambridge's Kendall Square and Boston's Seaport neighborhood.
MetroWest offices have rarely, if ever, been as much of a bargain comparatively.
Per-square-foot rates in Framingham and Natick were $33.90 in the second quarter of the year, according to a new report this week by Perry Brokerage Associates of Boston.
In the Boroughs — Marlborough, Northborough, Southborough and Westborough — prices have been far cheaper: $19.76 in the second quarter, according to Perry, easily the cheapest of more than 30 regions within the Boston area that Perry analyzes.
That's just 20 cents on the dollar compared to what a company would pay for office space in Kendall Square, or 28 cents on the dollar in the Seaport District.
Those gaps are greater than two years ago, when Perry's analysis showed per-square-foot costs in Kendall Square were around $78, not $97, as they are today.
Still, construction is flooding areas of Kendall Square, the Seaport and other neighborhoods where costs are already at a premium. Just this month, construction began on a 44-story office tower in downtown Boston with more than 1 million square feet.
Some notable companies are even ditching their far cheaper offices in favor of a more central location in the Boston region.
Drugmaker Genzyme, for example, is building a 900,000-square-foot office in East Cambridge where it will consolidate much of its Greater Boston operations. Shoemaker Puma is moving its North American headquarters to Somerville from Westford, and the healthcare technology company Philips is moving its North American offices from Andover to East Cambridge.
Framingham tech giant Bose Corp. is leasing 98,000 square feet at Boston Landing in Boston's Brighton neighborhood.
Perry reported no significant pre-leased office construction in MetroWest, while nearly 3.7 million square feet of space was being added in Boston alone, and another 936,000 in Cambridge.
Some new office space is being built in MetroWest, including a 150,000 square-foot facility where Olympus is planning an office for 400 employees in the Westborough Office Park. Hundreds of thousands of square feet of space remain available in the park, however, including directly across West Park Drive from Olympus' construction site, where eClinicalWorks has listed for lease its vacant 193,000-square-foot office.
Discount rates across MetroWest haven't been enough to keep vacancy rates as low as the Greater Boston average.
Vacancy rates were 15.7% in the second quarter in the Boroughs, and 11.1% in Framingham and Natick, according to Perry. The Greater Boston average is 10.3%.
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