Illustration of a Seaport office tower at dusk with half its windows dark, representing the Amazon Seaport sublease at One Boston Wharf Road.

Amazon Seaport Sublease: Half of New Tower Put on Market

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The Amazon Seaport sublease is one of the biggest office-market moves in Boston this year. Amazon has put more than half of One Boston Wharf Road, the 17-story Seaport tower it was set to occupy in 2027, on the market for sublease, according to the Boston Business Journal, which first reported it on Oct. 6, citing brokerage Hunneman’s third-quarter market summary.

How Much Space Amazon Is Giving Up

Reports differ slightly on the size of the block. The Business Journal, citing Hunneman, put it at about 325,000 square feet. The Boston Globe and Connect CRE reported roughly 375,000 square feet, with Connect CRE saying the space would be available in January 2027. The building’s office component totals about 630,000 square feet, so either figure is more than half of it.

Amazon does not appear to be leaving the building entirely. The Real Deal noted that the company was granted about $32 million in building permits at the property several months ago for interior and infrastructure work. Ground-floor retail tenants there include Boston Provisions Market, Moleskine and Skims. Amazon did not respond to the Business Journal’s request for comment, and developer WS Development declined to comment to the Globe.

Seaport Office Vacancy Hits New Highs

After the listing, office availability in the Seaport rose to 27.9%, according to Hunneman, and Connect CRE reported a district vacancy rate of 24.2%. Mark Fallon, Hunneman’s director of research and strategy, told the Globe that about 2.3 million square feet of Boston office space is available for sublease, with about 900,000 square feet of that in the Seaport. The recovery “is not going to be perfectly linear,” Fallon said.

Other large blocks are also open in the district. The 570,000-square-foot 10 World Trade building is still seeking its first tenant, and Ginkgo Bioworks is looking to sublease a 250,000-square-foot building it had planned to use as its headquarters, The Real Deal reported. On the other side of the ledger, Hasbro is moving its headquarters from Rhode Island into space at 400 Summer St. that Foundation Medicine had put up for sublease.

From 3,000 Jobs to a Smaller Footprint

Amazon’s Seaport “tech hub” was announced with plans for about 3,000 jobs, and its first lease at 111 Harbor Way, which it began occupying in 2022, was tied to about $25 million in state and city tax breaks in exchange for job creation, the Globe reported. The Globe said there was no similar incentive agreement for One Boston Wharf Road.

The move follows Amazon’s decision last year to shift leadership of its Alexa AI work from Boston to Seattle. Rohit Prasad, who led that group from the Seaport, left Amazon at the end of 2025 and this week was named chief executive of Waltham’s Boston Dynamics, according to the Globe.

Analysis: What It Means for Boston

This section is analysis and opinion from The Boston Report, separate from the reporting above.

The listing lands in a week that has been hard on Boston tech: the Schneider Electric buyout of PTC and the Uber ezCater acquisition both moved local headquarters companies under outside ownership. Amazon handing back a big block of brand-new tower space is a signal that even well-funded tech tenants are planning for fewer desks in Boston than they did a few years ago.

For the city, the bigger question is the tax base. Commercial property, including office towers, is a major source of Boston’s property tax revenue, and large blocks of empty space put pressure on office values. The upside is that sublease space in a new, amenity-rich building tends to move faster than older stock, and newcomers such as legal AI firm Harvey show there is still demand for Boston offices. How quickly One Boston Wharf Road fills will be an early test of whether the Seaport’s slump is a pause or a longer reset.

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