GE To Vacate Boston HQ As Part Of Broader Office Downsizing Effort

General Electric plans to move out of its headquarters in Boston's Fort Point neighborhood just three years after opening the space. 

The company told employees Tuesday it plans to vacate the 100K SF office and seek a smaller space in the city, part of a broader initiative to downsize its office footprint that also includes putting its corporate campus in Ossining, New York, up for sale, the Boston Globe first reported. 

The office downsizing comes as the company plans to split next year into three entities: GE HealthCare, GE Vernova and GE Aerospace. 

“Winding down our physical office space in Boston and other corporate sites is the next step as part of our plan to create three independent businesses,” a GE spokesperson told the Globe.

GE moved its headquarters in 2016 from Connecticut to Boston, where it had planned a 12-story, $200M campus along the Fort Point Channel that was intended to bring in 800 workers.

In February 2019, the company announced it would no longer be moving forward with the larger second phase of the project, limiting its headquarters to 250 employees. The company now plans to move those employees out of the two renovated brick buildings it occupies at 5 Necco St. 

As GE looks for another office location in the city, it isn't yet clear if it will sublease the space on Necco Street or if it will work out an exit deal with the building owner.

Despite GE giving up space, Fort Point is booming with other development activity. Alexandria Real Estate Equities and National Development are building a $700M, 12-story research facility for Eli Lilly on part of the site that GE previously owned and sold after it canceled the second phase in 2019. 

Last week, the Boston Planning & Development Agency signed off on Related Beal's $1.2B Channelside life sciences project, which sits next to the GE site.