Boston magazine is planning to move from its longtime home
"It is bittersweet for us to be looking for a new space."
Boston
magazine is on the move, though it’s not yet currently clear where.
After 35 years at Horticultural Hall in Back Bay, the magazine has decided not to renew its lease when it expires this summer, according to officials at Northeastern University, which recently bought this historic building across the street from Symphony Hall.
David Lipson, the CEO of Boston magazine’s Philadelphia-based publisher Metro Corp, confirmed the decision Wednesday to the Boston Business Journal.
“It is bittersweet for us to be looking for a new space, we have loved our time here,” Lipson said in a statement. “That said, Boston has changed so much in the 35 years since we took up residence in this beautiful building and we are looking at this as an incredible opportunity to experience a different part of the City.”
A spokesperson for the university told Boston.com on Thursday that Boston magazine had decided not to renew their lease before their $22 million purchase of Horticultural Hall.
It remains unclear where the publication, which has 44 full-time employees, will head. According to the BBJ, the magazine is looking for about 8,000 square feet of office space. Their current office space inside the 119-year-old Horticultural Hall covers a total of 15,500 gross square feet, according to Northeastern.
The planned move would make Boston magazine the most recent local publication to relocate to smaller offices in the age of digital media. In 2017, The Boston Globe — which, like Boston.com, is owned by Boston Globe Media — moved from its longtime headquarters in Dorchester to Exchange Place in the Financial District. The Boston Herald has moved twice within the last decade, from the South End to the Seaport to Braintree.
Northeastern says it plans to utilize the open office space at Horticultural Hall, which borders its Boston campus.
The university is also working with the City of Boston on a long-term plan that “takes advantage of the rich history and architecture of the building to program it with all the exciting things that happen at Northeastern,” according to Kathy Spiegelman, the school’s vice president and chief of campus planning and development at Northeastern.
“We are excited to bring this great building into the vibrant university ecosystem along Huntington Avenue,” Speilgelman said in a statement last Thursday.
Horticultural Hall was first built in 1901 for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and has housed a number of gardening-focused organizations on the corner of Huntington Ave. and Mass Ave. More recently, the classic brick building has served as the home to several media companies, including two marketing agencies — 829 Studios and Small Army — and the Museum of Fine Arts, which uses space for book storage.
However, Boston magazine has been its largest — and first — tenant since the building was renovated in 1984.
“The staff moved into one of the city’s most beautiful and unusual office spaces, which had been updated with a cantilevered mezzanine level that added square footage but preserved the hall’s grand scale and natural light,” Boston magazine wrote in an article looking back at the history of their longtime and soon-to-be-former home, which was published Thursday morning.
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