The study, put out by Lehman Brothers and Cushman and Wakefield,indicates that only 25% of all the telcom space in the GreaterBoston area was leased as of last February. That puts this areabelow New York, which had 56% leased; Washington/Northern Virginia,54%; and, Atlanta, 43%. "We're obviously one of the major telecommarkets," Jay Driscoll, senior director at Cushman & Wakefield,tells GlobeSt.com. "We are second in the country with the amount oftelcom space, just behind New York." The reason for that is thatoverseas traffic comes in through the East Coast.

For a brief period here, developers were grabbing up oldindustrial buildings and wiring them as Internet carrier hotels anddata centers. But, according to Driscoll, Boston started later thanother areas. "If you look at the real estate development cycle, bythe time people here got into this sector, the market started tocool," he notes.

For that reason, Boston's telcom real estate is softer than mostother major sections of the country. "Availability and demand arevery weak," says Driscoll. "The capital markets shut down andprevented it from developing." Driscoll characterizes the telcomreal estate collapse as happening "overnight. In the fourth quarterof last year, everything came to a screeching halt. We were workingon 600,000-sf that were good companies. Their stock prices wentdown to zero."