Foundation Medicine/Hasbro | 400 Summer Street | Seaport

Same deal as GE... the existing employees are going to be mad because of how much more expensive housing in Boston is, esp SFH. And that's the point - Hasbro hopes they quit and hire cheap College Grads to replace them.

Took 'em long enough to make the move.
 
I...do not think workers are cheaper in Boston than in Pawtucket. Cities are where things are happening and it is probably very hard to hire top talent an hour outside of Boston. Lego's move from Connecticut is another indication that global firms want to be in cities, especially in shiny new HQs.

This is a good thing for Boston and probably a good thing for Hasbro (i.e. its shareholders) over the long run. This is also a sublease, so wouldn't be surprised if they got a solid deal from Foundation to backfill the overbuilt space they moved into.
 
jklo said:
Same deal as GE... the existing employees are going to be mad because of how much more expensive housing in Boston is, esp SFH. And that's the point - Hasbro hopes they quit and hire cheap College Grads to replace them.

Took 'em long enough to make the move.
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Unlike GE, the location near South Station may allow some to stay in Pawtucket and commute by train...
 
GE's Fort Point headquarters were ~5 minutes closer to South Station than 400 Summer. Currently where the Lilly building is on Necco. But yeah this is close enough that many can still commute to South Station no problem
 
Digging through old architecture magazines, I came across a June 1988 article on Hasbro's extensive HQ renovations. Surely the offices have been renovated since then but they still occupy this building for at least a little while longer.


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Like GE, I don’t expect this relocation to outlast the current CEO.
 
Equilibria said:
Unlike GE, the location near South Station may allow some to stay in Pawtucket and commute by train...
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Justbuildit said:
GE's Fort Point headquarters were ~5 minutes closer to South Station than 400 Summer. Currently where the Lilly building is on Necco. But yeah this is close enough that many can still commute to South Station no problem
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@Justbuildit I think @Equilibria is referencing the fact that the commuter area for existing Hasbro employees in/near Pawtucket is at least still accessible to South Station via MBTA commuter rail service... whereas GE's move from Connecticut to Fort Point (much like Lego's to Back Bay) was disruptive to existing employees in that they too would have no choice but to relocate (or face a 2-3 hour super commute). We're archBoston: we all know that 15 Necco Street is a marginally closer walk to South Station than 400 Summer Street.
 
Fair enough, should have led with for the avoidance of doubt.

In any case, would have been a substantially better outcome if (a) Foundation didn't need to sublease their space and (b) Hasbro was the anchor tenant for the currently stalled 350 Summer parcel to get that project going again.
 
Justbuildit said:
Fair enough, should have led with for the avoidance of doubt.

In any case, would have been a substantially better outcome if (a) Foundation didn't need to sublease their space and (b) Hasbro was the anchor tenant for the currently stalled 350 Summer parcel to get that project going again.
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...or any of the many other recent projects that need tenants.
A few thoughts from a non-insider/armchair observer:
-Foundation seems to be weathering things comparably well, but let's be honest: the present policy climate and funding environments are not exactly friendly to many pharmas and biotechs at the moment. Further, (just based on visual observation) Foundation continues to seem to be using their east cambridge space, at least to some extent. I thought the Summer st. project was a complete relo for them, but it seems like some operations continue in cambridge. They built a specialized and not-that-old facility in cambridge in the first place, so I was originally surprised to hear they were consolidating elsewhere. Part of this could just be that it didn't make sense to bear the expenses of a complete relocation, given the present situation, when the original facility is continuing to at least meet near-term needs and is not that far from the HQ.

But I'd look at the bright side: the turnkey ready space is usually going to go first. The more of that softness that fills up, the more it strengthens the overall market and potentially helps the newer/in-process projects.
 
No of course it makes sense to sublease a turnkey ready space, likely at a decent discount in a basically brand new buildings. Simply from a "finish the project and make the urbanism better" I would've preferred a big new tenant to be the catalyst to get 350 Summer moving. With the millions of vacant square feet it's going to be a long time before the next cycle triggers a project like that but a person can dream...
 
Justbuildit said:
GE's Fort Point headquarters were ~5 minutes closer to South Station than 400 Summer. Currently where the Lilly building is on Necco. But yeah this is close enough that many can still commute to South Station no problem
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More to the point, Pawtucket to South Station is an existing, viable commuter route, whereas there was no commute option for Fairfield workers interested in still working at GE HQ.
 
Justbuildit said:
No of course it makes sense to sublease a turnkey ready space, likely at a decent discount in a basically brand new buildings. Simply from a "finish the project and make the urbanism better" I would've preferred a big new tenant to be the catalyst to get 350 Summer moving. With the millions of vacant square feet it's going to be a long time before the next cycle triggers a project like that but a person can dream...
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I think there's a lesson to be learned about phased mega developments in general: they literally never go as planned, and there are always years-long vacant parcels produced as a result of them. We see it at Cambridge Crossing, Seaport, Volpe, CambridgeSide, and others. They create these great briefing packages about vibrant, mixed-used developments that appear as though they're all going to materialize at once...but there's always a stall somewhere in the phase sequence...and things are never built in the order that the public might want: for instance, at CX and CambridgeSide, the residentals are stalled while the labs were pulled to the front. Or, as in this case, key street-fronting/place-making parcels are stalled. Developers want to try to lease the harder-to-lease ones first during a boom economy...but then when we hit a bust economy, sometime the marquee corner parcels are the blank ones that can't move ahead, or the residential ones get put on ice. These phasing plans are BS. If there is going to be such a thing as pre-approved, decade-long phasing plans (a gift to developers that saves them big $$ and time on plans an proposals), then city planning agencies should be making the developers pull the parcels to the front of the line that provide the most public benefit.
 
www.bostonglobe.com

In largest lease deal of year, Boston passes GO, collects 700 jobs with Hasbro - The Boston Globe

Hasbro's move to the Seaport is a big win for the beleaguered Boston office market.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

-for all of us who were wondering:

"....
Incentives were also at play in Hasbro’s relocation deal, with offers from both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Governor Maura Healey’s office confirmed a $14 million offer to Hasbro via the state’s Economic Development Incentive Program; the council managing the program will discuss the incentives later this month....."
 
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700 jobs is basically an entire Bay Village-sized neighborhood that should and must be built.
 
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