State Street consolidating Boston offices, pulling out of Fort Point

Boston Globe

3 days ago

For at least the past five years, State Street has used One Channel Center as the headquarters of its asset management arm, which recently changed its name from State Street Global Advisors to State Street Investment Management. Sarnoski said the asset management division will move into two floors at One Congress, including one where a new trading desk is being built.
Sarnoski said the primary reason for the office consolidation is to make the workforce more efficient, by putting more people under the same roof. Starting in the fall of 2023, State Street required workers to be in the office at least four days a week, one of the most aggressive post-COVID return-to-office mandates in the city.
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'The reason here [for the move] is purely we've seen the value of working in person,' Sarnoski said. 'It's been reinforced with our return-to-office mandate. ... It makes much more sense to have people in person in the same building.'
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Cost savings, he added, is also a benefit, though not the driving force. State Street last week told investors it would take a $100 million charge to account for severance packages associated with layoffs of 900 people across its global workforce; the move out of One Channel Center is unrelated. (The company declined to say how many Massachusetts jobs were cut.)
State Street still has several years left on its lease with landlord Tishman Speyer. Sarnoski said it's possible State Street will try to sublease the space, but the company is also talking about a deal to buy out the rest of the lease so Tishman Speyer can look at new tenants to fill the building, and offer a lease that lasts for longer than a few years. (State Street's lease expires at the end of 2029.)
State Street is one of Boston's biggest employers, and there are only a few that could use an office building as large as 500,000 square feet. For comparison, Pawtucket, R.I.-based Hasbro and P&G's Boston-based Gillette division, two big employers currently considering moves in Boston, are seeking offices that are roughly half that size.
Commonwealth Ventures and Ares Management began developing the building and its adjacent 970-space garage for State Street more than a decade ago. The building opened in late 2014, and it was
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Tom Ready, a board member at the Fort Point Neighborhood Association, said the departure would have a relatively low impact on the surrounding neighborhood, in part because State Street employees have tended to use the corporate cafeteria instead of eating out at local restaurants.
'They've been consolidating their footprint over time and reducing the size of their workforce in Greater Boston,' Ready said of State Street. 'It's not a surprise to us that they're either moving out entirely or don't require the full building anymore. [But] it is a surprise they're leaving before their lease is up.'
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