Seaport: One-stop living
Hynes? plan mixes work, home, school
By Scott Van Voorhis
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Seaport Square developer John Hynes is offering companies a sweet package deal: rent office space in his development and get housing for your employees and even seats in a private school for their children.
Hynes yesterday pulled the wraps off his 20-block Seaport Square project, which would take shape on a tract of windswept parking lots just across the street from Fan Pier on South Boston?s waterfront.
The veteran tower developer kicked off a series of meetings with South Boston residents and groups to win crucial neighborhood support for his project.
But Hynes is also preparing to sell his $3 billion project to a global audience, one made up of corporate executives weighing the merits of different cities for their next expansion.
And the Hub developer believes, by offering housing and a school along with corporate suites, that he has the formula to bring some of these companies, and their high-paying jobs, to Boston.
?You can?t get that anywhere in the world,? Hynes said. ?It obviously promotes our project and second, it helps promote Boston as forward-thinking and open for business.?
Under Hynes? proposal, a company looking to rent office space in his project would likely have to pay the current market rate, about $70 a square foot. But for another $8 a square foot, Hynes said, for example, he could throw in 100 apartments. Add another $3 per square foot, and he will throw in tuition at his project?s showcase private school for the tenant?s employees? children.
The Hub developer says he can offer this ?one-stop shopping? because of the wide-ranging nature of his Seaport Square plan, which includes 2,500 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of office space and a 1,500-student private school run by a private company, Nations Academy. In a new twist, there would also be a public school, an ?early learning center? for preschool through grade one children.
Still, Hynes first has to win over his neighbors, including the owners of the Barking Crab, a waterfront eatery the developer has proposed relocating into his project.
?We are more steamed than one of our lobsters,? said Barking Crab spokesman George Regan.
Regan contends the eatery was not properly consulted before the developer went public - a claim Hynes vigorously denies.
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