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Thomas O’Brien
Managing Partner and CEO, HYM Investment Group
Age: 59
Industry experience: 34 years
HYM Investment Group makes a living tackling some of the most complex developments in Boston, transforming landmark properties into massive mixed-use projects. As the firm’s decade-long redevelopment of the Government Center garage property as Bulfinch Crossing continues, it’s constructing the first apartment building at the former thoroughbred racetrack on the East Boston-Revere line. This summer, it’s set to begin permitting for a major life science and multifamily project at Roxbury’s parcel P3, a vacant lot that’s been eyed for decades by city leaders as a potential catalyst for the neighborhood’s economic revitalization. A former director of the Boston Redevelopment Agency during the Menino administration, Thomas O’Brien also worked at developers JPI and Tishman Speyer before founding HYM in 2009.
Q: What do the highest and best uses in downtown Boston’s commercial real estate look like in the near term?
A: Here’s some statistics that will be shocking to your readers. A well-known office tower in downtown Boston, about 750,000 square feet, has 4,500 employee passes issued, and on Tuesday through Thursday approximately 2,500 are used in that building. On Monday and Friday, approximately 100 of those passes are used. So obviously, we have a really important set of issues to work on collectively in the downtown. Those numbers reflect on what that means for everything in the downtown: the value of that building, the future of the tenants, the future of the rents, which affects the value of the building, the tax revenues. These are issues we have to collectively work on and think through with the city and state.
Q: As the current administration seeks to stimulate more housing downtown, does the performance of HYM’s Sudbury residential tower, which opened in 2020, provide guidance for the future of high-rise housing in Boston?
A: When we first took on that project, it cost approximately $675,000 per unit to build. Today, that would cost over $1 million per unit easily. So, the cost of these projects have gone way up, and I’m not sure it’s possible to easily develop a building like that in downtown Boston.
Q: Following HYM’s designation late last year to develop Parcel P3 in Roxbury, how is the project team expanding?
A: We have great partners including My City at Peace and Rev. Jeffrey Brown, and we are partnering with Madison Park Development Corp., DREAM Collaborative and Onyx Group. Lab Central formed an entity called Ignite, which is tasked with connecting with communities of color and doing a better job than the life science business has done in the past to provide jobs and invest in communities of color, and will move its headquarters from Cambridge to our site in Roxbury. Embrace Boston will have a permanent 31,000-square-foot site on our property for performances and community gatherings. We’re working through our documentation with the BPDA to make sure everything is lined up for the land transaction, and we expect to begin Article 80 review this summer.
Q: Is there still a plan to offer extended deed restrictions for the affordable units?
A: The central effort is to create home ownership to begin addressing the wealth gap between Black and Brown and white families in Greater Boston. Families were not allowed to purchase homes in the post-World War II era through the 1980s. Our view, and this is to be discussed with the city and state, is that if people own homes for a period of time, they should keep the equity in those homes. It’s a policy discussion we’ll have and it’s an important differentiator. Some people think of their home as shelter, but many Americans think of homes as an investment, and that’s an important piece we’re focusing on here.
Q: What are the potential effects of the BPDA’s proposed new design guidelines for lab projects?
A: Our team has spent a lot of time looking at the guidelines. Boston has a unique position. This is a business that is a huge generator of jobs and tax revenues. I would suggest there be a really robust discussion with all parties involved here. There are a lot of regions in this country, including North Carolina and other places, that would love to steal these jobs from us, and going slow and listening is warranted on this topic. Boston has a competitive edge in that business today, and it’s a business that can be adversely affected quickly and it can go away quickly.
Q: What’s the timetable for the start of the biomanufacturing and R&D project at Suffolk Downs?
A: We have all the infrastructure for 100 Salt St. We have all the infrastructure, we dug the hole and we have purchased the steel, and we are in the process of working to find a tenant. It became a little bit harder to entertain spec building at the end of 2022, whereas a year ago that would have been the natural course. The first phase is 280,000 square feet and the first two floors which comprise around 70,000 square feet are really built for biomanufacturing in a way that is like anything else around Greater Boston. We have another residential building that will start this spring, and another smaller life science building, around 70,000 square feet, that will start later this year, including space for startup companies called The Workshop.
O’Brien’s Five Favorite Books:
- “The Seven Storey Mountain” by Thomas Merton
- “Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution” by Nathaniel Philbrick
- “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- “The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940” by William Manchester
- “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson
