The Museum of American Finance signed a 10-year lease at Commonwealth Pier in Boston’s Seaport District this month. The affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution will occupy 5,400 square feet beginning in July 2026. Image by Uviz | Courtesy of the Museum of American Finance

The vibrant restaurant and retail scene in Boston’s Seaport District is about to get a further boost from one of its oldest corporate anchors, Fidelity Investments.

Pembroke Real Estate, an affiliate of the giant financial services company, announced the first three restaurant and retail tenants out of 10 that it expects to lease new space to in the Seaport District’s Commonwealth Pier. The development is currently in the final stages of a major refurbishment that Pembroke hopes to fully complete next year.

Meanwhile, Fidelity recently signaled that it plans to sublease its headquarters building at 245 Summer St., next to Boston’s South Station, after it moves employees into the renovated Commonwealth Pier next year.

That move alone could bring in well over 1,000 new employees into the very heart of the Seaport and its increasingly rich array of high-end shops and restaurants.

Add it all up, and an already hot Seaport restaurant and retail scene is about to get hotter.

“Seaport is absolutely on fire,” said Whitney Gallivan, a partner and managing director of Boston Realty Advisors. “Seaport is doing quite well.”

In fact, the restaurant and retail market across Greater Boston as a whole is showing strength. Boston metro market’s overall retail availability rate of 2.9 percent is the lowest in the nation, according to first quarter data from Costar Real Estate.

And, by far, the region’s two strongest retail subsectors, in terms of lease prices, are Boston’s Back Bay and Seaport neighborhoods.

Copley Is King in Rent Race

The long-established Back Bay market still reigns as king in terms of the rents its coveted retail spaces can fetch – anywhere from $125 per square foot to as high as $225 per square foot in prime locations, according to industry experts.

Meanwhile, Seaport rents range anywhere from $85 per square foot to $150 per square foot, industry sources say.

But the mere fact that the Seaport, which only a few decades ago was a mostly-barren wasteland of surface parking lots and ramshackle buildings, is mentioned in the same breath as the Back Bay is notable.

“I wouldn’t call them rivals, but the two neighborhoods do share some characteristics,” said Ann Ehrhart, founder and CEO of advisory and brokerage firm Everstreet. “They have the same underlying, fundamental strengths.”

Chief among those strengths is their diverse mix of housing, offices, retail and tourist attractions that keep people coming and going in the neighborhoods, day and night.

In other words: the Back Bay and Seaport both have the classic “live, work, play” components that residents, workers and visitors increasingly desire in urban areas.

As it plotted how to redevelop its Commonwealth Pier offices, executives at Fidelity Investments’ real estate arm looked to create the same “live-work-play” mix that has made Boston’s Back Bay so successful. iStock photo

‘Live-Work-Play’ on Pier

Kristan McLaughlin, director of asset management at Pembroke, said a live-work-play environment is exactly what her firm is trying to achieve at Commonwealth Pier.

“It’s that community feeling – a thoughtful place where people can feel comfortable,” she said.

Planning for the refurbishment of Commonwealth Pier — which is owned by Massport and operated by Pembroke via a long-term lease — began before the pandemic.

But actual construction didn’t get fully underway until after the outbreak of COVID-19 – and all of the subsequent pandemic-related economic upheavals that can still be felt to this day.

“There have been challenges, for sure,” said McLaughlin of the Commonwealth Pier project getting underway during turbulent times. “The economy impacts everything.”

Renovation work on the exterior of the pier is now finished, with the goal of completing all interior work some time in 2026. The cost of the refurbishment project has not been disclosed.

In the end, the project will add nearly 100,000 square feet of new open space to the former World Trade Center building, including a new outdoor waterfront plaza and an enhanced Boston Harborwalk.

In all, Commonwealth Pier, originally built as a huge cargo terminal in 1912, will have about 800,000 square feet of office, retail and open space.

Restaurant Lineup Starts to Assemble

Earlier this month, Pembroke announced two new restaurants, both owned by Union Square Hospitality Group, will be leasing a combined 19,000 square feet of space at Commonwealth Pier.

Ci Siamo will be located on the Upper West Level at the pier, while Daily Provisions will be located on Lower West Level, according to officials.

Signing up the two restaurants, which are expected to open by the end of 2025, was quite a coup for Commonwealth Pier. The founder and executive chair of Union Square Hospitality Group is Danny Meyer, the New York restaurateur of Union Square Café and Gramercy Tavern fame.

The new Union Square eateries will be joining a strong lineup of restaurants already in the larger Seaport neighborhood, including nearby Nautilus, Woods Hill, Ocean Prime and Legal Sea Foods.

Meanwhile, the Museum of American Finance, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, recently announced it has signed a 10-year lease for new exhibit space at Commonwealth Pier. The lease is for 5,400 square feet of space that’s expected to open to the public in 2026.

The museum will become Seaport’s latest non-traditional retail tenant. Others include the Museum of Ice Cream, F1 Arcade Boston, Flight Club Darts and Puttshack.

Pembroke is close to announcing two more tenants at Commonwealth Pier, executives say.

McLaughlin expressed confidence those remaining units will be leased out relatively soon.

Evergreen’s Ehrhart said Pembroke has every reason to be confident about filling the remaining units at Commonwealth Pier, particularly waterfront dining spaces.

“Based on the success of other waterfront spots in Seaport, I project Commonwealth Pier [restaurants] are going to do very, very well,” she said.