Real estate firm T3 Advisors is latest to relocate from Waltham to Boston's Innovation District

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist

A real estate advisory firm that helps tech companies find office space is planning a move of its own, trading the 'burbs for the big city. Waltham-based T3 Advisors will move its twenty employees into One Marina Park Drive (a/k/a the MassChallenge building) this summer. And T3 CEO Roy Hirshland has some interesting plans for the new space, including setting up an "Innovation Studio" that will offer transitory space for entrepreneurs, lawyers, consultants and other tech ecosystem workers. The new space is about 5,000 square feet, and overlooks the Boston Innovation Center, currently under construction just across Northern Avenue.

Hirshland tells me that T3's Innovation Studio will have space for "five to ten people," who might be patent attorneys visiting for two or three hours, or entrepreneurs working on a new venture for two or three months. "It's not an incubator or a co-working space," he explains. "It's really just a place where some of our firm's friends and people who work in the ecosystem can connect."

Hirshland says that the new office, on the building's third floor, will also be a kind of showcase for new approaches to workspace design. "We're planning to have interesting furniture and lighting and other elements that will show how different work styles can be supported," Hirshland says. None of the T3 employees, he adds, will have a dedicated desk; they'll use meeting rooms and desks on an on-demand basis.

Two of T3's clients, Battery Ventures and EnerNOC, have also leased space at One Marina Park Drive. A third client, LogMeIn, which had previously been based in Woburn, just moved to its new headquarters at 320 Summer Street this week, in the Fort Point Channel area.

Hirshland says the new office's proximity to Logan Airport was a big draw; T3 opened a Palo Alto outpost last year, and so he and other employees are hopping planes more often.

But he doesn't think the suburbs are over as a location for innovation-oriented companies: "We have a ton of clients who still want to be on Route 128."