Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/508998
FOCUS: Central Mass. 100 Central Mass. waits out T changes 7 Officials wonder how a restructured transit system will impact commuter rail lines. Read our annual list of the region's top employers. WBJ >> To Subscribe Q&A with Brent Maugel of Maugel Architects, Harvard. Shop Talk 8 Central Massachusetts' Source for Business News May 11, 2015 Volume 26 Number 11 www.wbjournal.com $2.00 12 Locked, loaded and primed to sell Fully leased properties with marquee tenants are drawing interest from commercial real estate investors BY SAM BONACCI Worcester Business Journal Staff Writer I n the face of stagnant interest rates, investors looking for long-term returns are dropping their money into commercial real estate filled with tenants holding long-term leases. The recent sale of White City Shopping plaza in Shrewsbury for $97 million represents the fully-leased investment property that has proven popular in the last two years, according to Michael Smith, a managing director and principal at Avison Young, a commercial real estate firm. Anchored by a Shaw's supermarket, the property has national brands with long- term leases that will provide the new owners, Inland National Real Estate Service, of Illinois, with a steady income. >> Continued on Page 10 A key attraction in the recent sale of White City Shopping Plaza in Shrewsbury is the fact that it's fully leased with a mix of tenants, some bearing national brand names. 'Big data' becomes a bigger deal Businesses, colleges rise to meet growing need for actionable information BY SAM BONACCI Worcester Business Journal Staff Writer B ig data represents a more nebu- lous and far-flung term than "innovation economy." At its core, the term encompasses the ability to col- lect data and make sense of huge chunks of raw information. Yet big data is also becoming impor- tant for businesses in optimizing profits and planning the future. That's why companies large and small will employ about 500,000 people by 2018 whose jobs will be connected to big data, accord- ing to McKinsey Global Institute, which published a seminal study on big data in 2011. Every second, billions of bits of information are being created. Whether it's demographic data or information about what kind of weed killer is flying off a store's shelves, being able to take that information, make sense of it and transform that newfound knowledge into profit is becoming easier for a small business to accomplish, according to Fielder Hiss, vice president of marketing and product management at Enernoc, a Boston-based provider of energy intelli- gence software with operations in Worcester. "Big data has really exploded in the past five years or so," he said. "Big com- panies have been doing things with big data for a long time, but the technology has really come a long way." The ability to use all that data has become more ubiquitous, thanks in large part to cloud-based computing, said Fiedler Hiss of Enernoc: "Big companies have been doing things with big data for a long time." >> Continued on Page 25 P H O T O / S A M B O N A C C I 100 CENTRAL M A S S