A Look Back, A Look Ahead

This year, KHJ moved our offices from the Seaport to Boston’s downtown waterfront.

We’ve called the Seaport District our home for ten years and there’s certainly a lot that we’re going to miss. And a lot we won’t (we’re looking at you, Silver Bus Line).

Over the course of the past ten years, the Seaport District has changed drastically. But perhaps the most rewarding aspect of watching this brand-new neighborhood pop up all around us was to see all the KHJ-generated brands and campaigns on display, defining the neighborhood and setting the tone for what’s to come.

Ten years later, you can’t hop from expensive chain steakhouse to expensive chain steakhouse without bumping into a KHJ-created place, logo, or activated public space.

We have the neighborhood blanketed in KHJ-created brands, from its northernmost point (Fan Pier) all the way down to its southernmost tip (Black Falcon Pier), with millions of square feet in between.

A Few Highlights

Naming our home

The “World Trade Center Complex” was the first development in the area once known (and still known by government types) as the “South Boston Waterfront.”

KHJ was hired to rebrand the complex, along with the Seaport Hotel to create a singular business complex brand. “Seaport Place” became more than a brand to us; it also became our home for a decade. We will miss it, and especially the support and partnership over the years from our amazing landlord, Pembroke.

Breaking new ground

Fan Pier was the first new mega-development to break ground in the Seaport, and the brand we helped launch set the tone for a new, world-class waterfront.

New neighbors

Waterside Place and Park Lane added apartments to the neighborhood and further surrounded our offices on all sides with life and activity.

A jewel rises

With the neighborhood’s buildings mandated to a strict FAA-flat top of about 20 -stories, the district started looking more and more like a rectangular box farm. That’s when Cronin Development dropped its plans for something completely unique: a stunning, dazzling piece of architecture. A tower that still conformed to the strict FAA rules without sacrificing design beauty.

Proving that just a little outside-of-the-box thinking could command Boston’s record-shattering per-square-foot sales, the St. Regis Residences is the most significant and recognizable piece of architecture in a neighborhood so often knocked for its lack of creativity.

Our work with St. Regis in Boston led to an ongoing relationship with Marriott Residential on properties including the St. Regis in Chicago and a Ritz-Carlton on the West Coast.

Through it all, we learned to forgive Cronin Development for knocking down the agency’s favorite watering hole, the Whiskey Priest!

The art of possibility

Today, one of the largest employers in the Seaport District is Vertex Pharmaceuticals. While many people know of KHJ’s work on national destination brands, it’s our life sciences and health care portfolio that is home to some of our proudest work.

Today, Seaport Boulevard is full of vans connecting the multiple Vertex locations that are wrapped in the corporate brand platform that Vertex still uses today: The Science of Possibility.

Vertex had approached us as their first drug reached FDA approval and the firm was making the jump from Cambridge to the Seaport District – this decades-in-the-making start-up was about to blow up, and KHJ created a brand platform that would help them write the next chapter in their history.

As the district grew, so did our roster of health care, life sciences and technology clients in the neighborhood.

Lastly, we can’t forget about the friendly neighbors within our very own office complex that we had the joy to partner with over the years, including Nutter, Cabot and AEW Capital Management. We’ll miss commuting to client meetings via hallways and elevators.

Hello Boston

KHJ’s new offices are on the most Boston of Boston streets – Broad Street, connecting Faneuil Hall with the Harbor.

Our new street is so Boston that the Mighty Mighty Bosstones wrote a song about it.

It’s so Boston that while it’s only four blocks, it’s home to three Dunkin Donuts. And yes, it’s so Boston that our construction was delayed for a full week because Matt Damon was filming a movie on it.

So, we’ve traded the glass-and-steel boxes for granite slabs, cobblestones and the red bricks of a gorgeous 1880’s warehouse building.

We’ll miss being in a location that KHJ branded, however, our front yard is the Rose Kennedy Greenway, so yet another KHJ-generated brand will greet us as we go about our daily routines.

In a year of big change at KHJ, we’re so proud of our new home. So, when are you dropping by to say hello?