He added, “With this new office, Amazon will be adding 430,000 square feet of state-of-the-art workspace within WS Development's Seaport project – a 7.6 million square foot development transforming the Seaport District of Boston. We look forward to opening the doors of our new space in 2021.”

Among those on hand for the groundbreaking festivities were (second from right) Boston Mayor Martin Walsh and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker. Photo Courtesy of WS Development

Amazon's expansion of its Boston Tech Hub was announced a little more than a year ago when the firm stated plans to create an additional 2,000 technology jobs in fields including machine learning, speech science, cloud computing, and robotics engineering. At the time of the announcement in May 2018, Amazon stated it had created more than 3,500 jobs in Massachusetts and since 2011 invested in excess of $400 million in the state.

Yanni Kosta Tsipis, SVP – Seaport at WS Development, said, “Today is about so much more than a building or a real estate project or a milestone on a construction schedule. Today is about something much bigger. Today is about what we can accomplish as a city and as a Commonwealth when government, private sector, civic leaders, and community partners collaborate with a sense of purpose and shared vision and values to do big, complicated, difficult things—together.”

Tsipis touted the its planned Harbor Square Park that is part of the development, which he said will serve as a hub of community activity and “will form a beautiful oasis in the midst of the bustling city all around us. This park is also an important part of Harbor Way, the new linear park that we are building block-by-block between Summer Street and Boston Harbor. Once complete Harbor Way will create a new pedestrian connection that will stitch together the Seaport neighborhood and provide a beautiful and very public route right to edge of Boston Harbor.”

The new 111 Harbor Way building is viewed as a central component of WS Development's Boston Seaport project, the largest single real estate endeavor in city history, spanning 23 acres across 20 city blocks. WS is developing 7.6 million square feet of mixed-use development. At full build out, the development is slated to feature 3.2 million square feet of residential space; 2.8 million square feet of office/research space; 450,000 square feet of hotel space; 1.1 million square feet of retail space and 8.8 acres of public open space.