265 Franklin Street, Boston
Eastern Bank, with assets of $4 billion, is committed to a permanent stay in Boston – evidenced through its announcement, expected today, of its move into new headquarters at 265 Franklin St.
We’re already in the middle of design and we’ve got a contractor working on it, said Richard E. Holbrook, president and chief operating officer of the bank.
The move-in date for the 46,000-square-foot offices is scheduled for June.
The offices at 53 State St. and Milk and Federal streets will be consolidated into the Franklin Street offices, which will house retail space on the first floor and administrative and corporate headquarters on the other two floors. The 15-year lease has an option for an additional 10 years.
Holbrook said that although the bank was committed to finding more suitable lease space in Boston even when the market was pricier, the lower prices helped to secure the longer lease term.
Eastern had signed a seven-year lease at 53 State St. in 1998 without knowing if the amount of space they had was going to be too much or too little, said Holbrook.
We actually took space and sublet some of it. A few years later we were sorry we had done that, because we needed more space, he said.
Although the offices on State Street were suitable, they had simply run out of room since cracking a bigger chunk of the commercial real estate and middle-market lending areas, said Holbrook.
Additionally, the bank has added trust and private banking services.
This [long-term lease] confirms for the market that we feel that they’ve accepted us and we’re making a long-term commitment to continue to serve them, he said.
While the move gives Eastern more space, it offers another asset. We’re moving into a building that gives an opportunity for retail space on the first floor and much more identification of the building as being an Eastern Bank property. All of those are to our betterment, Holbrook said.
He added that Eastern looked at dozens of properties around the city, from the Seaport area to the Back Bay. But the central downtown financial district was where they wanted to be located, he said.
But we were most excited about where we thought this building was going to be positioned long run as the Central Artery came down and as the focus of the Financial District starts to shoot more towards that end of the street, he said.
Eastern leased the space from Boston Properties through Eastern’s broker David Fitzgerald at CB Richard Ellis/Whittier Partners. Construction is being performed by Shawmut Design & Construction. Eastern hired Visnick & Caufield Assoc. to perform the architectural work.
