LaSalle Completes Post Office Square Lobby Renovation, Lands 117K SF Medidata Deal

Out with the old, and in with the interactive at one Post Office Square office building.

LaSalle Investment Management acquired 50 Post Office Square in late 2015 and unveiled in early February a new lobby at the building’s 110 High St. entrance.

The developer worked with Elkus Manfredi Arhitects to add a 35-foot glass curtain and digital Boston Media Band in hopes of driving leasing activity, which was accomplished with a 117K SF lease (all of the building’s remaining available space) with life science firm Medidata Solutions. 

“These kinds of tenants want a nice entrance to their building,” LaSalle Investment Management Head of U.S. Asset Management Kristy Heuberger said. “It can’t feel like it’s a back door.”

LaSalle didn’t want to do anything to the building’s Art Deco design, but Heuberger said the company knew it wanted a clean, glass structure for the lobby of the new “building within a building.”

The developer and architect team were then able to take a small back door and underutilized public plaza and come up with the new lobby. The interactive digital wall was the final piece used to woo a tenant to the building’s lower available floors. 

“We were looking for what would be that wow factor,” Heuberger said.

The 84-foot Media Band, designed by ESI Design, has three media modes and interacts with tenants and visitors as they walk past. Characters in Silhouette Mode wave and dance to passersby, and they even wear weather-appropriate attire. They will even don sports gear for game day or during the Boston Marathon. 

Bay Mode features animated schools of fish found in the Charles River and Massachusetts Bay, and Tenant/Building Mode displays tenant information for 110 High St. 

“We took something that wasn’t functional or pleasing to look at and made it very pleasing to look at,” Heuberger said.