The Winthrop Center and 75-101 Federal St. towers are seen on Oct. 1, 2025. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
A virtual city located under one roof, the 1 million square-foot Winthrop Center tower in downtown Boston has a food hall, health clubs, billiard room and even a “Club VIP” doggy daycare.
The office-condominium tower’s amenity package is so generous that some office tenants report that their employees check in on weekends, said Rich Baumert, managing partner at developer MP Boston.
“They’ve taken full advantage of it. They see a lot of the community spaces and it’s kind of like town centers in this location,” Baumert said.
With 80 percent of its 750,000 square feet of office space leased to tenants such as McKinsey, Deloitte and M&T Bank, the two-year-old skyscraper represents the advantages that class A trophy properties enjoy in an increasingly bifurcated office market.
In the city of Boston, class A buildings now have a 16.1 percent vacancy rate, compared with 23.2 percent for class B properties, commercial brokerage Hunneman reported in its most recent research. Across Greater Boston, office vacancies increased from 19.6 to 20.4 percent in the third quarter.
Major leases such as DataDog’s renewal and expansion for 125,000 square feet at 225 Franklin St. were offset by completion of major new projects such as 10 World Trade in the Seaport District and Hines’ South Station Tower.
Notable office transactions at class A buildings included Hasbro’s 256,000 square-foot sublease at 400 Summer St., KKR’s lease of 132,000 square feet at Two International Place, DataDog’s 125,000 expansion and renewal at 225 Franklin St., Schneider Electric’s 74,635 square-foot expansion and relocation from 1 Boston Place to Winthrop Center and Citadel Securities lease of 11,000 square feet at the South Station Tower.
An uptick in relocations, rather than renewals among large leases represents a notable shift since early in the year, JLL said in its third quarter office market. That points toward a modest future decline in vacancies, along with a 77 percent increase in full-floor tenants currently in the market for space.
Back Bay commands Boston’s highest asking rents at $78.70 per square foot, Avison Young reported, followed by $69.20 per square foot in the central business district and $59.30 per square foot in the Seaport District.
Availability rates range from 23.3 percent in Boston and 24 percent in Cambridge to 17.7 percent in the inner suburbs, 23.8 percent on Route 128 and 24.1 percent on the Route 495 belt, Avison Young reported.
The Winthrop Center project was designed by Handel Architects before the pandemic, but is Millennium Partners’ first office building to contain residential-scale amenities, with approximately 25,000 square feet of recreational, dining and fitness space available to office tenants.
“Particularly for the way people are now working in offices, this was something that [architects] had always dreamed about: to create a space that allows for more community interaction,” Baumert said.
