How a former dairy plant is becoming Boston’s newest destination
“Just a couple decades ago, the 20 acres off Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown owned by the H.P. Hood dairy company was a bustling industrial site.
Today, the campus is beginning to bustle in a new way as new residential, lab and retail construction is taking over what is now known as Hood Park. The site boasts almost 600,000 square feet of office and lab space, 51,000 square feet of retail space and 177 residential units; in the future, it is expected to be home to 1.8 million square feet office and lab space, 100,000 square feet of retail, 335 apartments and 150 hotel rooms.
“One of the biggest changes was actually all at the ground level ... There was a sea of asphalt,” said Christopher Kaneb, manager of Hood Park LLC, about the property before development began. “Development really hadn’t come this far. (100 Hood Park Drive) was surrounded by almost 15 acres of parking. It was functional, but a very, very different experience.”
H.P. Hood was founded in 1846 and operated its headquarters and dairy plant at the site off of Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown until 1995, when the company was sold to the Kaneb family, which still owns and operates the company as a separate entity from Hood Park.
Just a few minutes’ walk from the Sullivan Square MBTA stop, in the last few years, Hood Park has become Boston’s newest major life science development.
In June, 100 Hood Park Drive, a building that provides a centerpiece for the campus, reached the height of its construction at 13 stories. The base of the building, consisting of seven stories, 61,000 square feet of lab space, ground-floor retail and a 900-space parking garage, was completed in 2020; next year, an additional 186,000 square feet of office and lab space is expected to open in the top five stories.
While it may be the biggest construction project at the site, 100 Hood Park is far from the only home of lab and technology space. Several other buildings, including both new construction and renovated buildings dating from the days of Hood’s dairy plant, are now home to a variety of companies ranging from national players to small start-ups, and more space is being constructed all the time….”
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