Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff
Twenty-seven years after it was first conceived, developer Hines’ South Station Tower finally opened Thursday afternoon to the sounds of a French jazz trio.
Executives from Hines, project contractor Suffolk Construction, architect Pelli Clarke & Partners and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu took turns praising the building and the people who made it possible at a party at the building’s 11th-floor main lobby level. Sitting on top of the 1.1 million-square-foot, 51-story tower’s parking garage – which itself floats above South Station’s platforms – that level includes a 1-acre rooftop garden designed by OJB Landscape Architecture.
“We have built, probably, the most magnificent building ever seen in the city of Boston,” Suffolk CEO John Fish declared from a podium set up next to the building’s residential lobby, whose ceiling was adorned with hundreds of dangling glass leaves.
Marketing of the tower’s 166 Ritz-Carleton-branded luxury condominiums, being orchestrated by The Collaborative Companies, have been underway since 2023 but no sales have yet closed, typical for a building that until this week wasn’t yet officially delivered. Units start at $1.3 million.
The units face competition from still-unsold units in Cronin Development’s St. Regis Residences and 122 homes in the Fallon Co.’s One Harbor Shore building, which topped off in May amid a general softening in the Greater Boston condominium market. The Collaborative Companies is the exclusive sales agent for all three buildings.
The building’s 680,000 square feet of office space is still being leased up, too. So far, only three tenants have been named: financial services firm Citadel’s lease was announced last week, while insurer FM Global, leased 57,000 square feet in January and law firm Jones Day took 41,000 square feet in December 2024.
Wu, project architect Ted W. Clarke and Jeffrey C. Hines, chairman and co-CEO of the Texas-based developer that bears his family name, all cast the tower as “a crucial piece in the puzzle of a revitalized, prosperous, post-pandemic downtown Boston,” as the mayor put it.
“The cycle has found its bottom. We stand at the beginning of a new era for office and mixed-use development. South Station is living proof the next cycle of growth has arrived, underpinned by real demand, resilient fundamentals and shared ambition,” Hines said.
Hines announced this summer it is partnering with a REIT called Healthpeak on a 4.6 million-square-foot, 46-acre mixed-use development in Cambridge’s Alewife Quadrangle neighborhood that will include nearly 2,100 homes and millions of square feet of commercial and lab space.
