Lego HQ Moving to Boston

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shmessy

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Didn't know where to put this, so I guessed here. Mods please move it you think it needs to.

www.bostonglobe.com

Legoâs North American headquarters is coming to Boston - The Boston Globe

The toymaker could bring hundreds of jobs to Mass. as part of moving its main US office from Enfield, Conn., with plans to grow once they get here.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

This is a BFD, folks - - 740 high paying marketing/engineering jobs with NO government inducements whatsoever (when you're wicked smaahhtt, they come for the quality). Lego has been collaborating with the MIT Media Lab for decades - - the synergy of this move is huge.
 
shmessy said:
Personally, I'm surprised they didn't choose Cambridge North Point - - to triangulate closer with Lego World in Assembly Somerville and the MIT Media Lab.
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The article mentioned that they currently occupy a smaller space in 501; given their preference for close proximity to public transit, I wonder if they have a larger footprint in mind?

Wayfair has vacated/is attempting to sublease their space within 500 Boylston as well as the space they took hold of, but never moved into in the Park Square Building.
 
Would this be considered a success story of the recent office crash?

I’m sure the ability to get a great deal on a lease downtown sweetened the deal. Will we see more HQ moves while CBD office space is plentiful and cheap?
 
I’m sure that helped the economics but I see this as part of a bigger trend in corporate America where the suburban office park is being abandoned in favor of urban amenity-rich HQs (pharma, Converse, GE to name a few in the area)
 
Sucks for the existing employees that are going to see their housing costs go waaaay up... assuming they actually follow the company to Boston. Getting the hell out of CT is likely the main driver of this but hoping their older employees quit with the move in favor of cheap young people currently in Boston is also a nice draw.
 
This would be very good!! Hope that they'll feature a factory outlet where people can buy stuff at a discount!! :)
 
Justbuildit said:
I’m sure that helped the economics but I see this as part of a bigger trend in corporate America where the suburban office park is being abandoned in favor of urban amenity-rich HQs (pharma, Converse, GE to name a few in the area)
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True, but this wasn't exactly a suburban office park, it was co-located with a manufacturing facility.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if they were tenants in a new building. This is a huge deal of a new office in Boston.

Also, Reebok space is too far from public transit and not very close to anything imo.

Seaport has more buildings to go up and I wouldn't be surprised if one of those was home to Lego. Possibly one of the remaining Seaport Square for a new building and being near SS.
 
I didn’t know anything about Lego until I read this story so I may be off base but the Globe story says the current HQ went from 230 acres including manufacturing to just the offices by 2007. Their newest manufacturing site is in VA rather than back in CT, so it kind of seems like this 45 year old site has slowly been bleeding out during the reurbanization of the aughts. Still, they’re leaving old roots behind to come to the clear business and educational powerhouse of New England, which is great!
 
A lot to speculate until we see more details on what space they're taking, but, to me, this is a really promising example of potential space utilization shift post-Covid. There are a lot of design occupations that can be done part-remote but will likely still sustain a substantive on-site component, perhaps such as those at Lego. Historically (by the end of 20th c) these types of firms had located themselves outside of urban environments, in part because space was too expensive and they were space-intensive (in terms of sq. ft. per person). Now, however, with pure digital jobs vacating some of their urban space, it changes the opportunities available. "Design" firms that work on physical product might actually be able to be located within cities again. As has been mentioned, proximity to universities and recent grads and 20somethings who like to live in cities might be seen as benefits, in addition to being part of an innovation ecosystem in general. So a reallocation of commercial building space in this direction could be an interesting outcome of the pandemic. Another recent example is Hyundai/Boston Dynamics taking a large sublet right in Kendall Sq.
 
Arlington said:
Nice! Then I’m ready for 7 weekly r/t (this is alternating days currently?)
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Cheap, tho

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Can't get to Paris for that money except by stopping in Iceland on PLAY.
 
Equilibria said:
Cheap, tho

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Can't get to Paris for that money except by stopping in Iceland on PLAY.
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Super cheap, and if you time things right, you can get it for less than half that price. My two adult kids just visited Copenhagen and paid less than $300 each for the round trip on that flight.
 
I can also see where staff accustomed to Copenhagen would find Boston "like-enough" in size (both city and as provincial capital and transit/walkable, and even the role of its airport), even down to "toward the water" is East, and that there's an actual harbor there. I visited CPH in December and, I think, March, and remember the weather being fairly similar to Boston too.
 
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I wonder if LEGO would consider the BxP development at the back bay garage. It looks like they are expecting to be fully relocated by 2026.
 
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