The first image of what GE’s future headquarters in Boston’s Fort Point might look like has made its way to light.

An example of the Fairfield, Connecticut-based industrial giant’s potential approach for the 2.5-acre site was posted online Friday and quickly removed after it went viral on social media.

The rendering showed a glassy office tower built to the south of two industrial buildings at 5 and 6 Necco Way. A boardwalk beneath a transparent canopy bearing the GE logo connects the old and new buildings.

GE spokeswoman Susan Bishop said the design is preliminary.

“We’re still very early in the process,” Bishop said. “We have a design philosophy but I wouldn’t say we have full architectural drawings at this point. We have a couple of drawings that we’re sharing here and there, but those are not the only ones.”

GE General Counsel Alex Dimitrief discussed the project last Wednesday during an address to the New England General Counsel Symposium in Boston. In an account posted on the GE Boston mobile app, Dimitrief said the new headquarters will be “a nerve center for GE as well as a place to convene business leaders, schools and the community for shared, common purposes.”

The final designs will be submitted to the Boston Redevelopment Authority by Labor Day, Bishop said.

The headquarters would be approximately 300,000 square feet, Bishop said, including the two existing buildings totaling 90,000 square feet which are owned by Procter & Gamble.

In April, GE picked the Boston office of Gensler from a field of more than 35 architectural firms following a 10-week selection process.

“The aspiration is a building that is about fostering and driving new ideas, not about housing people,” Doug Gensler, managing director of Gensler Boston, told Banker & Tradesman at the time.

Boston and state officials lured GE from its longtime 68-acre campus in Fairfield, Connecticut with a $145 million package of public incentives, including $25 million in local property tax breaks and $120 million in state infrastructure grants.
GE will purchase the two existing buildings from Procter & Gamble and sell them to MassDevelopment, the Boston Business Journal reported last week. Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Jay Ash told the publication that the grant money would be used for the MassDevelopment purchase from GE as well as infrastructure improvements including a public park and upgrades to the Harborwalk which runs between the property and Fort Point Channel. GE would pay for operations and upkeep, but not rent, the BBJ reported.

In the meantime, approximately 400 GE corporate staff will move in late August into a 60,000-square-foot temporary headquarters at 33-41 Farnsworth St. in Fort Point. Most of the space was previously occupied by software company Bullhorn, which moved to the Financial District, and renovations are already under way.