Image courtesy of Morris Adjmi Architects
Toymaker Hasbro is leaving its longtime home in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in favor of Boston’s Seaport District.
The company’s new headquarters will be WS Development’s 400 Summer St. building, also home to Foundation Medicine.
The company says it will be occupying 265,000 square feet across seven floors, and plans to move 700 full-time employees there by the end of next year. The company has around 1,000 workers at locations in Rhode Island, a number of whom live in Massachusetts.
The relocation comes after around a year of rumors and high-stakes wooing by state and city officials in Hasbro’s Rhode Island home, and by officials in Boston, Massachusetts and elsewhere – a contest that was interrupted by the Trump administration’s sudden and erratic tariff policy announcements in April.
Demonstrating just how many potential sites were in the mix: a Rhode Island television station reports that Pawtucket officials offered Hasbro the iconic but vacant Apex Department Store property, while Beacon Capital’s troubled Southline development in Dorchester was also mooted to be under consideration.
In announcing its headquarters move, Hasbro said its new headquarters would help the company “accelerate innovation, attract top talent, and drive long-term growth in line with Hasbro’s Playing to Win strategy which emphasizes play-driven engagement and collaboration with partners.”
“Boston’s thriving business community, deep academic partnerships and cultural vibrancy, together with our Seattle team’s leadership in technology, creativity, and innovation, give Hasbro an unparalleled foundation for growth,” CEO Chris Cocks said in a statement. “Together, these offices will fuel the next chapter of Hasbro.”
Both Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Gov. Maura Healey gave quotes for Hasbro’s announcement, in which they lauded the decision.
The Executive Office of Economic Development said Hasbro’s move would make the company eligible for Economic Development Incentive Program tax credits of $20,000 per job relocated to Massachusetts. If Hasbro relocates 700 jobs as expected, the tax credits could total $14 million over a handful of years.
The secretariat said it “expects to recommend this award of tax credits for approval by the Economic Assistance Coordinating Council (EACC), which meets quarterly to award EDIP tax credits, and to explain that this incentive is a material factor in the company’s decision to relocate to Massachusetts.” The EACC’s next meeting is scheduled for Sept. 17.
“We’re proud to welcome this iconic company to Team Massachusetts – where we are number one for education, health care and innovation, and ranked the best state to live in, to raise a family, to be a woman and to be a working parent. I’m grateful for the leadership of Chris Cocks and his team at Hasbro, and for the hard work of my economic development team that helped make this possible, ” Healey said in a statement.
Hasbro is the second major toymaker to relocate to Boston in the last 12 months. Danish company Lego moved its United States operations to Samuels & Associates’ Lyric Back Bay complex last year, announcing the deal in 2023 while its new home was still under construction.
The lease also adds some certainty to 400 Summer St.’s future.
Foundation Medicine originally inked a lease for nearly all of the 600,000-square-foot building, which delivered in the spring of 2024.
But a little more than a year after its topping off, and amid a collapse in biotech investment volumes that many biotechs were counting on to help them rapidly scale, in fall 2023 Foundation Medicine put 125,000 square feet up for sublease, according to the Boston Business Journal.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much of Hasbro’s newly-announced headquarters is being subleased from Foundation Medicine.
The 12.15 million-square-foot Seaport District office market was 12.6 percent vacant as of the second quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield research. That broke down into 1.38 million square feet of direct vacant space, and another 643,695 square feet of vacant space available for sublease. Average class A asking rent sat at $69.78 per square foot.
State House News Service staff writers Sam Drysdale and Colin A. Young contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about the tax breaks Hasbro will be eligible for as it completes its move to Boston.
