Douglas T. Linde
President and Director at Boston Properties
Thanks, Owen. Good morning, everybody. So we're sitting here on May 3, pretty late for us to have a call, but obviously we had a lot of news to report and we wanted to make sure our own schedules worked out there. Most employers have begun their journey to discover how they're going to match their human capital with their utilization of physical space. It's clear that the census on public transportation and in our office buildings continues to be below levels in 2019. There are going to be organizations that make few, if any, changes to their space configuration, location, or allocation of space per employee.
Those clients will be and are in the market making long-term leasing commitments based on their growth, and as Owen said, a lot of companies grew, and their lease expiration schedules. There will be businesses that experiment with different models. These companies could sublet space, they could commit to more or less short-term space, or they could simply watch how their business responds to their new in-office cadence and do nothing until their lease gets closer to its natural expiration.
It's also true that the availability rate of space defined by third-party brokers that look at the entirety of the market, and as Owen described, there are lots of ways to cut it, but in general, it still continues to be elevated in our urban markets. But as Owen pointed out, if you start to analyze the activity, the best buildings are getting more than their proportionate share of market demand.
Despite these headwinds on demand and supply, the BXP portfolio had its third consecutive sequential strong leasing quarter. Our total activity was again spread amongst Boston, New York, San Francisco, and the Metropolitan Washington region.
Last quarter, we showed an occupancy gain of 40 basis points. In this quarter, we picked up another 30 basis points. As we sit here today, we have signed leases for our in-service portfolio on vacant space that has yet to commence, so it's not in our occupancy figures, of more than 975,000 square feet, which is up from 925,000 square feet last quarter. This would represent an additional 220 basis points of occupancy.
We began 2022 with over 1.4 million square feet of leases in negotiation on space in the in-service portfolio. At the end of the first quarter, after completing the 1.2 million square feet I mentioned, we have active lease negotiations underway in the in-service portfolio at about 1.3 million square feet and we had over 750,000 square feet in our development pipeline. During the month of April, so the last 30 days, we signed an excess of 1.1 million square feet of space. We are moving quickly and confidently to lease up our portfolio.
While our portfolio is comprised of the highest quality buildings in their submarkets, we have another advantage, which is our operational platform. We are in constant contact with our clients, as we look for ways to create opportunities in the portfolio for our customers where a leasing transaction may not be readily apparent. Let me illustrate as I begin my regional comments in Boston.
Life science is the clear driver of new demand in the suburban Boston market, but our traditional Route 128 office leasing is also extremely busy. This quarter, we agreed to recapture and release 73,000 square feet at 77 CityPoint. We were aware of a large tech company that was seeking to establish a presence inside of 128. When we were finalizing the recapture and release of 16 -- 1265 Main Street late last year, this tenant expressed interest, but we were too far along with our transaction to accommodate them. Our tenant at 77 CityPoint had a lease that expires December 31, '24, and had listed its space on the sublet market beginning in 2019 pre-pandemic related. Instead of simply waiting for the lease to expire, we negotiated an early termination recapture and signed a new seven-and-a-half-year lease, which also resulted in a 15% net increase in the rent.
Let me give you another example. We have a relationship with Wellington, the prime tenant at Atlantic Wharf. Our team was aware of Wellington's strong desire to improve their carbon footprint in any new real estate commitments. Working in partnership with Wellington, as well as the local energy provider, Eversource, and a solar developer, we were able to find a way to reposition the mechanical systems at our 140 Kendrick Street project and make a net-zero commitment. This resulted in a 105,000-square-foot lease for space scheduled to expire in November '22. In addition, we signed leases with two other tenants for the remaining 80,000 square feet in this project, and leases for that space were also scheduled to expire in November '22; all with rent roll-ups of about 40%.
By just looking at the performance of the XBI [Phonetic ] in your stock screen, it's pretty clear that the equity markets have not been kind to public biotech companies. However, there continues to be significant demand for life science tenants in the Boston market, many of which continue to be funded with private capital and have strong science working in their favor.
Over the last two weeks, we've signed another 45,000 square feet of leases at 880 Winter Street, and are in final lease negotiations on the remaining space. And we've signed 140,000-square-foot lease at 180 CityPoint, the new 329,000-square-foot building under construction. Steel erection is underway, and we're hoping to deliver that space in the fourth quarter of '23. And obviously, we are excited to have AstraZeneca as a new client in Kendall Center, and look forward to getting that building under construction in early '23.
Our CBD Boston activity this quarter was primarily small transactions. We completed seven deals for 47,000 square feet, average markup was 17% on a cash basis. At the moment, we are in lease negotiations on more than 300,000 square feet of leases in the CBD of Boston, with four transactions over 40,000 square feet.
The New York regional second-generation statistic this quarter merits an explanation. In early 2020, Perella Weinberg made the decision to relocate out of the GM Building. COVID hit, they posited plans to move and they asked for a short-term renewal. We accommodated that request at an as-is market rent that was below their expiring rent, with the hope that we could use this time to convince them to reconsider their decision and entertain a long-term renewal at the GM. What you see in our statistics this quarter is the impact of that short-term deal. Fast forward to April 1, 2022, our operating team was able to work with PWP to provide a long-term solution, and they have signed 125,000-square-foot lease renewal at GM that will keep them as our client until 2040. The mark-to-market on this new lease involves the relocation to lower contigua floors. On the floors there that are a remaining part of their premises, the rents are down about 7%.
In New York City during the quarter, the most significant leasing transaction was a 330,000-square-foot extension and expansion at 601 Lexington Avenue. This lease involved the client expanding into a direct vacant floor as well as floors that are expiring in the second half of '22, totaling 180,000 square feet. The rents on this block is down about 7.5%. We also completed a 70,000-square-foot renewal at 510 Madison where the cash rent is down about 10%, and five small transactions totaling 24,000 square feet.
Our current activity in New York continues to be strong. We have multi-floor lease negotiations underway at 399 Park Avenue, at Dock 72 and another full-floor lease at the General Motors Building, as well as a number of smaller leases at 250 West 55th, Times Square Tower and 510 Madison. Total activity is in excess of 400,000 square feet. Construction is underway at 360 Park Avenue South, and we are actively touring the building every week and trading proposals for 2023 lease commencements.
Our Boston CBD, Cambridge and Waltham markets, as well as Midtown, New York, are significantly busier than San Francisco, Northern Virginia, DC and LA. In the San Francisco CBD, there have been a handful of large tech tenants in the market and those deals have gravitated towards the well-built sublease space at assets like 350 Mission and 680 Folsom, our property with a Macy's sublet. The bulk of the activity on a direct basis has been in the financial district and it continues to be concentrated at the Better Buildings with professional service firms and financial firms.
We completed 10 leases totaling 104,000 square feet in the CBD this quarter, our cash rents increased by 25%. As we sit here this morning, we're working on another 110,000 square feet, including three full floors at Embarcadero Center. And we completed over 50,000 square feet in our Mountain View portfolio on currently vacant space. Our venture with ARE, as Owen said, has commenced construction at 651 Gateway, and we are making a full-floor and multi-floor proposals with anticipated occupancy in late '23, early '24. The venture did about 45,000 square feet of non-lab leasing at 601 and 611 Gateway this quarter.
I'll finish my remarks with Northern -- around Northern Virginia and DC. During the fourth quarter, activity in Reston was concentrated on partial-floor deals, i.e., small deals. We completed six totaling 20,000 square feet and are actively negotiating another five in the in-service portfolio. We have one full-floor lease negotiation at their next phase of the Reston Town Center project, but large tenant activity in the Reston submarket has been slow as we started 2022.
Rents have held up. They're in the low '50s with a 2.5% annual bump to the low '60s with similar bumps for RTC Next. In the district, we signed our second non-anchor deal at 2100 Penn, and are in lease discussions now with a multi-floor office tenant and a retail tenant that would bring the leasing at 2100 Penn to over 80%.
Activity at the street plane, retail in Boston, and in Reston and New York City has picked up significantly. Parking revenue in Boston and San Francisco continue to improve, while activity in parking in DC, LA and Seattle are still restrained. The first quarter parking revenue excluding Seattle was 77% of what it was in 2019, and we expect a meaningful bump in the second quarter as we moved away from Omicron.
We have had three consecutive strong quarters of office leasing and a great April 2022. Employers continue to search for new employees, businesses are leasing space and we are capturing incremental portfolio occupancy. To circle back to Owen's comments about quality, employers want to use their physical space to encourage their teams to be together. The availability rate in the best buildings is lower, and there is significant relative rental rate outperformance. We create great placement spaces so our customers can use space as a tool to attract and retain their talent. While not at 2019 levels, employees are spending more and more time in the office, and it's even more critical to have the right place and space.
Mike?