the innovation and design building

Tenant Engagement / Cultural Programming

Client

Jamestown Properties

Location

Boston, MA

Square Ft.

1,350,000

Services

Concept Creation
Retail activations
Design Elements
User Feedback Collection
& Synthesis
Community Engagement
Event Production & Execution
Digital Placemaking Services

Summary

Since 2016, Isenberg Projects has worked with Jamestown Property Management to help create consumer facing engagements through targeted activations at The Innovation and Design Building in Boston’s Seaport. The primary focus of this work is to provide guidance on retail, design and community engagement that supports office leasing and fosters office culture, and community awareness of the property’s ground floor retail.

The Challenge

The Innovation and Design Building is now home to dozens of companies with several thousand employees, but it showed struggles with developing authentic experiences that built community while it was in the midst of a large transition of its former use. Our challenge was to strategically develop a community that intersected office tenants with a growing retail scene year round while creating distinct messaging and programming.

The Outcome

To address these struggles, Isenberg Projects strategized unique concepts designed to identify trends within food culture, start-ups, and burgeoning retailers, crafting a narrative that would simultaneously attract IDB’s future office tenants and appeal to existing tenants. This required one of a kind offerings dynamic enough to attract visitors to the Seaport and help bridge a closer connection to the city of Boston. The end result is a thriving ecosystem of programs that bring 100,000’s of the Boston community to the property year round. IDB has in the last few years leased up over 85% capacity and has become a destination for innovative companies’ flagship offices. Reebok, America’s Test Kitchen and Living Proof are recent tenants that have truly cemented IDB as more than the Seaport, but as something unique and highly desirable unto its own.