WS Development tops off 707,000 s/f net zero carbon office building

Boston, MA WS Development celebrated the topping off of One Boston Wharf, the city’s largest net zero carbon office building, in the Seaport district. 

One Boston Wharf is a 707,000 s/f, 17-story building with ground floor retail and restaurant uses, as well as the 700-seat Seaport Performing Arts Center (SeaPAC) located on the 2^nd and 3^rd floors and 630,000 s/f of office space. 

One Boston Wharf will be the largest net zero carbon office building at the time of its completion in 2024. This remarkable achievement will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90% vs. code requirements and eliminate 5.1 million lbs. of CO2 emissions annually. WS Development’s commitment to achieving net zero carbon status for One Boston Wharf is complemented by its commitment to purchase renewable generated electricity for all electric power serving its Seaport portfolio. 

In 2021, Amazon had leased the entirety of the office space within One Boston Wharf, creating a total footprint of over 1 million s/f within WS Development’s expansive 33-acre Boston Seaport development. 

“With this milestone, we celebrate all that this building signifies for Seaport and for Boston – job creation, economic empowerment, innovation, and new investment in the performing arts in our community. We are incredibly grateful to Amazon for their belief in Seaport, to our partners in city and state government for supporting our vision, and to our partners at Turner Construction and the skilled men and women of the building trades in Boston for their commitment to excellence and safety,” said Yanni Tsipis, senior vice president, Seaport, WS Development. 

WS Development chose esteemed architectural firm Henning Larsen, based in Copenhagen, Denmark to envision and design the new building. In a collaboration between Henning Larsen and local architecture firm Gensler, the building will embrace its surrounding public realm with a hand-crafted terra cotta enclosure for its first three floors before transitioning upward to a mesh of architectural fins that will catch and reflect sunlight throughout the course of the day. The building’s design emphasizes human-focused elements, including multiple outdoor terraces and the Boston Wharf Paseo, a street-level interior public promenade lined with shops, cafes, and public art installations. The Paseo will lead pedestrians from the Fort Point Channel Landmark District to a new one-acre public space called The Rocks at Harbor Way recently completed with WS Development’s 111 Harbor Way building. 

This new park is a focal point of the future Harbor Way, a 1/3-mile public promenade that will connect Summer St. to the water’s edge – a plan conceived of by the world-renowned landscape architecture firm James Corner Field Operations, well-known for their work on Manhattan’s High Line. The park will create a hub of community activity across all seasons, hosting hundreds of public events annually.