Image courtesy of Arrowstreet Architects.
After six decades in Boston, investment advisers Cantella & Co. had reached the point where commuting hassles outweighed the prestige of a downtown address.
As it settled on a suburb just north of the city for its new home, CEO Jay Lanstein opted for new construction with a differentiator: plans for a 4-story, 60,000-square-foot office building using mass timber construction. The Malden, Massachusetts project will source its materials from Bensonwood, a Keene-based building material supplier.
Boston-based architects Arrowstreet suggested the unusual design, Lanstein said. He liked the rustic look, but wondered about costs compared to traditional concrete and steel construction.
“It turned out the cost is about the same,” Lanstein said. “The structural engineer is your interior designer. You drop a column and it’s done. Steel gets wrapped and there’s all these other decisions. We like the classic look, and the ability to do something different than what’s in the marketplace.”
Cantella estimates the project will cost $20 million, on top of last year’s $3.9 million site acquisition.
Lanstein said the decision to leave the 28 State St. tower in Boston made sense, since most of the company’s 50 employees live north of the city. The company is leasing office space in Malden Center pending completion of the new building in late 2020.
Mass timber has been used in just a handful of commercial properties in the Northeastern U.S., but is being used in developments in Greater Toronto totaling 4 million square feet. The material is assembled in factories using adhesives to assemble columns and panels out of lumber and other wood materials.
“It’s pretty new around here, and that’s a combination of code officials not quite being sure what to make of it, and fewer sawmills around here that can make it compared with the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada and Europe,” said Sean Selby, a principal at Arrowstreet.
Massachusetts building codes allow mass timber construction heights up to 85 feet.
In Massachusetts, mass timber was used in the John W. Olver Design Building which opened in 2017 at University of Massachusetts-Amherst. New Hampshire’s first mass timber building broke ground recently in Newington’s portion of Pease International Tradeport. Its developer picked the technique similarly for aesthetic reasons.
Buildings using the technique offer potential energy savings because of the material’s superior insulating qualities compared with steel and concrete, according to research by brokerage Avison Young. Proponents of mass timber also say it offers a less carbon-intensive form of construction compared to traditional concrete and steel.
Cantella & Co. will occupy the top floor of the building, and Avison Young is marketing approximately 50,000 square feet of office space in the remainder of the building, which also will include approximately 5,000 square feet of retail space. Asking rents in the “Near North” class A office market have increased 22 percent over the last 24 months, according to Avison Young research.
