Gillette on Wednesday filed a notice with City Hall to redevelop its sprawling World Shaving Headquarters campus in Fort Point, disclosing that roughly one-third of new development on the 31-acre site would be focused on housing while the rest would consist of commercial development such as offices, labs, and retail space.
Gillette’s notice of intent is simply the starting point for engaging with the Boston Planning & Development Agency. It does not include many details about what executives at Gillette parent Procter & Gamble envision for the site that runs between A Street and Fort Point Channel, just steps from the Broadway MBTA station on the Red Line. The goal, Gillette said, is to create a vibrant mixed-use community as well as a unique waterfront park. The project would help open up that stretch of the waterfront to the public, with more than half of the acreage to be set aside for open space.
Last October, P&G announced its decision to move Gillette’s manufacturing operations out of South Boston, ending more than a century of blade-making in the neighborhood. Much of the manufacturing will move to P&G’s 150-acre campus in Andover, which will be rebuilt to accommodate the new work. The company promised at the time to offer jobs in Andover to all of the 450 displaced manufacturing workers. Also at the time, the company said about 750 corporate, engineering, and research employees at the Fort Point campus will stay in South Boston — though the company still hasn’t decided whether they’ll be in a new building as part of the redevelopment or they’ll move into another office nearby. About 1,250 people work at the Fort Point campus today.
Gillette has long held its Fort Point real estate close but began selling off parking lots and other parcels nearly a decade ago, including two little-used brick warehouses that for a time held GE’s Boston corporate office. The company launched a more thorough review of its Massachusetts properties in 2019 to figure out how best to reposition them for the future, a review that was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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In its letter to the BPDA, Gillette outlined a number of benefits from the upcoming project: creating one of the largest waterfront parks in Boston on private land, transforming a predominantly industrial property into a mixed-use community, generating new jobs and real estate taxes, and fortifying the low-lying area against rising sea levels with “green infrastructure” to address stormwater concerns and coastal resilience. Gillette didn’t disclose the full size of the project it intends to build, but did say it will be built out in phases.
Gillette said the work that will happen at the Andover and South Boston properties will represent P&G’s largest single investment in Massachusetts that the Cincinnati-based consumer products company has made since buying Gillette in 2005.
Since unveiling the news of the move last fall, Gillette officials have been meeting with community leaders about how best to plan the redevelopment. The company plans to host a site tour and topic-specific meetings in the coming weeks to share planning concepts and receive feedback, and has launched a website to provide updates to the public.
“It is important to us that Gillette serve as a steward for the future of the place we have called our home for more than a century,” Kara Buckley, Gillette’s vice president of community affairs, said in a statement. “This is a generational opportunity to strengthen Gillette’s business and establish a foundation for continued success as a proud South Boston-based company, while also providing significant new benefits to our neighborhood, the surrounding community, our city, and our state.”
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Mayor Michelle Wu issued a statement saying she was glad to see Gillette is committed to a mixed-use, transit-oriented development that incorporates climate resilience planning and devotes half of the site to open space. “My Administration will continue to work closely with Gillette and the community through planning, design, and regulatory processes,” Wu added, “to ensure the details of this major investment best serve the community and are consistent with our goal of inclusive, resilient growth.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.