In the biggest office lease signed in Boston since the pandemic’s onset, Amazon committed to occupy 630,000 square feet in a new office tower at 1 Boston Wharf Road in WS Development’s Boston Seaport portfolio.
The e-commerce leader said 3,000 employees in its Alexa, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Robotics and Amazon Pharmacy groups will occupy the 17-story tower designed by Copenhagen-based Henning Larsen architects upon completion in 2024.
The building also will include a pair of 100- and 500-seat theater for live performances. The performing arts venue component was part of the original master plan for the larger Seaport Square development, which WS Development bought a portion of from Boston Global Investors in 2015.
Amazon earlier leased a 525,000-square-foot office building at 111 Harbor Way, which broke ground in 2019 and is scheduled for completion this year.
Amazon’s commitment is a signal of confidence in the future of traditional office models that have been disrupted by the work-from-home model, as well as the desirability of urban workspaces.
“Much of the technology that makes Alexa smarter every day is invented in Boston,” Rohit Prasad, vice president and head science for Alexa at Amazon said in a statement.
The 10.9 million-square-foot Seaport District had the highest asking office rents of any Boston submarket at $66.76 per square foot at year’s end, according to Newmark Knight Frank research.
Life science lab projects have accounted for the bulk of the leasing and development activity in the Seaport District and other core Boston submarkets since the onset of COVID-19. Office tenants have been putting off long-term space commitments or offering their unused space for sublease amid uncertainty about the length of the pandemic.
The 33-acre, 7.6-million-square-foot Seaport development is a partnership between WS Development and PSP Investments, a $170 billion pension fund that manages retirement funds for Canadian public employees. In addition to 2.2 million square feet of space under construction or leased on four development parcels, the Seaport has another six building sites available totaling 2 million square feet, WS Development said.
The second Amazon building will contribute $5.5 million toward affordable housing through linkage payments and another $1.1 million for job training programs.
