Hasbro Inc., one of the world’s largest toy companies, will move its headquarters to Boston from its long-time home of Rhode Island.
The company (Nasdaq: HAS) will occupy seven floors across 265,000 square feet at 400 Summer St. in the Seaport District, it said Monday. At least 700 employees are expected to fill the office.
The decision ends a relocation search that began last year, when Hasbro and Massachusetts government leaders met over dinner and started discussing a move.
Hasbro’s move is the latest company that Boston’s been able to draw from across the region.
That includes, most notably, two others from Connecticut: General Electric from Fairfield in 2016 and Alexion Pharmaceuticals from New Haven the next year. From elsewhere in Massachusetts, it has drawn the AI company Dynatrace to downtown from Waltham and EMD Serono to the Seaport from Rockland within the last year. Others in recent years include PTC moving to the Seaport from Needham and Converse to the North End from North Andover.
Hasbro’s search led last year to tours of office buildings in Boston including two downtown on Summer Street. In 400 Summer in the Seaport, the company chose what may have seemed an unlikely destination at the outset of the search: a lab-and-office building.
400 Summer Street
WS Development leased the 580,000-square-foot property to Foundation Medicine in 2019, and the building opened last year. But Foundation had put a large chunk of the property on the sublease market, where it sat amid a broader slump in lab demand.
Hasbro will join a growing list of major employers in the Seaport.
The neighborhood was little more than surface parking lots interrupted by the occasional office or apartment building until Vertex Pharmaceuticals moved there from Cambridge in 2011. The Seaport has since attracted offices for Fidelity Investments, Amazon, Mass- Mutual, Boston Consulting Group, PwC and Goodwin, among others.
Rhode Island governor, Pawtucket mayor react
The loss of Hasbro is a blow to Rhode Island — its self-esteem, if not its economy.
Hasbro has a well-known name far beyond the Ocean State, thanks to brands like Monopoly, Play- Doh and My Little Pony. It has also long been a point of pride for the blue-collar city of Pawtucket, which also lost its minor league baseball team, the Pawtucket Red Sox, in 2021 to Worcester. Pawtucket has also lost another major employer: Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, which closed in 2017.
Rhode Island leaders scrambled to hold onto Hasbro last fall after the Business Journal broke the news in September that the company was considering relocating its headquarters. Officials offered the company a prime undeveloped Providence parcel for $1, among other enticements. Gov. Dan McKee met with Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks in January.
Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien said the loss is “a painful reality for the people of Pawtucket, who stood by Hasbro for over a century. McKee downplayed the loss.
“Today’s announcement does not impede Rhode Island’s growth or economic success,” the governor said in a statement.
In the end, it was not enough.
Boston has now wooed two toy giants to the city in recent years: Lego moved its North American headquarters to Boston this spring from Connecticut, with plans for an eventual 800 employees. Hasbro is also eligible for up to $14 million in state tax credits in Massachusetts.
Hasbro’s Boston office will serve as headquarters for what the company says is a majority of its corporate services as well as its primary offices for toys, board games and licensing. The company also has a Seattle-area office that serves as the headquarters for its gaming and digital businesses.
Hasbro’s CEO, Chris Cocks, said in a statement that the company will benefit from Boston’s “thriving business community, deep academic partnerships and cultural vibrancy.”
Public officials in Massachusetts touted the Hasbro news on Monday.
“We are thrilled that Hasbro has chosen Massachusetts as the home of its new headquarters, and we’re ready to support the hundreds of jobs they will create here,” said Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.
“The creativity and wonder at the heart of Hasbro’s work are also at the heart of our mission to make Boston a home for everyone,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said.
Jeremy Sclar, the chairman and CEO of Chestnut Hill-based WS Development, also celebrated the news.
“For over a century, Hasbro’s innovation and creativity have brought joy to people around the globe,” he said. “Today, we extend a warm welcome to Hasbro’s new headquarters in the Seaport, the hub of Boston’s innovation and creative economy. We look forward to Hasbro becoming an integral part of this dynamic neighborhood.”
Hasbro unveiled a new strategic growth plan in February named “Playing to Win” that includes boosting its users by 50% by 2027 and making $1 billion in cost cuts by that year. The company’s share price jumped after the announcement.
Hasbro also seemed to foreshadow — or at least not shy away from — a pending move to Boston when in February it unveiled the first official Boston version of the Monopoly game. The game’s mascot, Mr. Monopoly, was shown in a video outside Boston landmarks like Fenway Park and Union Oyster House.
It was also outside the State House and City Hall — and in its future home, the Seaport.
This article originally appreared in the Boston Business Journal. Greg Ryan contributed reporting.
