Samuels & Assoc.’s updates to the former Landmark Center in the Fenway include a redesigned lobby that connects to the new 25,000-square-foot Time Out Market food hall.

As it expands its restaurant point-of-sale systems into the hotel sector and new markets including the United Kingdom, tech vendor Toast Inc. is purging a portion of its real estate footprint in Boston.

In an SEC filing this week, Toast announced it will pay $15.7 million to landlord Alexandria Real Estate Equities to terminate its lease for more than 111,000 square feet on the eighth floor of the 401 Park Drive complex and 22,495 square feet on the fifth floor. The lease had been scheduled to run through 2029.

The firm expanded its footprint rapidly from 2015 to 2017, opening a Landmark Center headquarters that helped establish the Fenway neighborhood as a growth corridor for tech companies. The firm more than doubled its headquarters at the Park Drive complex to 81,000 square feet in 2017 to accommodate a hiring spurt adding 250 employees.

The decision to exit the Fenway lease comes amid setbacks reported Monday in the company’s first-quarter financials, including a net loss of $81 million, up from $23 million in the same period of 2022. Revenues grew 53 percent to $819 million.

Tech industry cutbacks have contributed to declines in Boston office leasing and a surge in subleasing since mid-2022.

Greater Boston’s office market has nearly 1.2 million square feet of negative absorption in 2023, according to Hunneman’s REALinsights report released this week. Tighter lending conditions, layoffs and recession fears will continue to reduce property values and increase vacancies.

“There is undoubtedly more pain to come for the office market,” Hunneman researchers Mark Fallon and Michael Klemm wrote.

Alexandria, the life science industry’s largest landlord, acquired the 401 Park Drive property in 2021 for $1.5 billion. The firm said at the time that the building contained 221,000 square feet that can be converted into labs.

Toast Terminates Fenway Lease After Posting $81M Loss

by Steve Adams time to read: 1 min
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