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The Cambridge Innovation Center is expanding by half again its Kendall Square office space for startups, adding a net square footage of 42,000 to the 80,000 square feet it already occupies, at a cost of about $6 million, owner Timothy Rowe reports.
The lion’s share of new square footage will come as so-called core space — the office space the innovation center builds out on its own, and occupies in long-term leases, as opposed to that which it subleases from other tenants, or rents short-term without making improvements. Rowe said by designing the space for startups’ flexible needs, he can fit eight desks for every five he can fit in a conventional office layout.
The move comes as one of the center’s largest tenants, Hubspot Inc., approaches the end of its lease, Rowe confirmed. Hubspot occupies an entire floor in the Innovation Center, and CEO Brian Halligan has said he’s looking for new office space in Cambridge. Rowe declined to comment on Hubspot’s plans, except to say he hopes to keep them as a tenant.
The move will include a nearly fivefold increase in the center’s coworking space — an addition of four coworking centers to the one Rowe opened last year, accommodating about 140 seats in total. Rowe’s plans are part of a wave of new coworking spaces opening in the Boston area.
The expansion will also add 13 more of the Innovation Center’s ‘uno’ offices, designed for a single occupant.
“We’re looking at every last square foot. We’re looking at sizes of desks. We’re saying if the office was one foot wider you could have one more desk in it. You lose the inefficiencies of where things don’t fit right,” Rowe said.
The Cambridge Innovation Center has signed a 10-year lease on 57,000 square feet of core space it intends to build out over the next six months. At the same time, it is moving out of some of the more temporary space it had occupied throughout the building. The expansion will cost the center $6 million, which it intends to finance out of its own pocket, and with two bank loans currently at the term sheet stage, Rowe said. He declined to name the banks backing the expansion. The center has also renewed its lease on its existing 37,000 square feet of core space for another 10 years, Rowe said.
The startup office center will add two entire floors in the One Broadway building, formerly occupied by Millennium Pharmaceuticals, which has moved to a newly constructed headquarters, to the Innovation Center’s lease, meaning the center and its tenants will occupy six of the building’s floors in total, Rowe said.
Rowe is also planning to open a restaurant called Venture Café, serving food and drink in a setting where entrepreneurs are likely to run into one another. He outlined details of the planned hangout in October.
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