Another Company Is Ditching The Suburbs For Boston’s Urban Core
Health technology company Philips will move its North American headquarters from Andover to Cambridge Crossing in 2020.
The Dutch company announced Thursday it is moving to 250 North St., the first phase in DivcoWest’s 45-acre mixed-use development. Philips will relocate its innovation and commercial healthcare technology teams from Andover and its Cambridge-based North American Research Center to the new building. It is leasing 243K SF at Cambridge Crossing’s first phase.
“Philips is a perfect fit for the [Cambridge Crossing] vision,” DivcoWest President of Development Tom Sullivan said. “The office space is explicitly designed to attract life science and high-tech companies.”
Sullivan’s company broke ground on the first phase of Cambridge Crossing, formerly known as NorthPoint, last year much to the relief of companies looking for more space in the notoriously tight East Cambridge submarket. When complete, the development's 2.1M SF of science and technology space will be a welcome addition to a hotly desired neighborhood with routinely no available lab space and soaring rents.
Philips’ scheduled move is the latest in a series of suburb-to-city corporate relocations in Greater Boston. Reebok moved from a 65-acre campus in Canton to the Innovation and Design Building in the Seaport, and Needham-based PTC announced in September it would relocate in 2019 to 121 Seaport in the Seaport District.
While he recognized the trend, Sullivan said his company is courting more than just suburban companies vying for downtown real estate.
“Cambridge has an elevated visibility to tech companies as a prime location that they need to consider, or should actively consider, for access to talent,” he said.
