The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the world’s leading management consulting firms, today announced plans to relocate its New York City offices to 10 Hudson Yards. BCG will move more than 500 employees into 193,295 square feet of space on six floors in the 52-story tower in the fall of 2016. The number of BCG employees at 10 Hudson Yards is expected to grow substantially over the next five years.
BCG will join Coach Inc., L’Oréal USA, SAP and VaynerMedia in the 1.7-million-square-foot tower, which is located at the corner of 10th Avenue and the north side of 30th Street, and is now more than 90 percent committed. Other tenants at Hudson Yards include Time Warner Inc.; KKR; Boies, Schiller & Flexner; and Neiman Marcus. Hudson Yards is being developed byRelated Companies and Oxford Properties Group.
“We are thrilled to be relocating our New York offices to the most digitally enabled development in the city, in one of the most vibrant neighborhoods,” said Ross Love, BCG’s managing partner for New York. “Ten Hudson Yards is an ideal fit for our firm. The fast-rising neighborhood and exciting location will help us continue to attract and keep the top talent that is our most valuable asset. Even more important, the opportunity to design the space from scratch will allow us to promote new ways of working. Planned as an ‘office of the future,’ the space will push the boundaries of BCG’s strategy to create workplaces that support collaboration and choice. It will be a creative, high-energy environment where people want to spend time.”
The LEED-Platinum designed tower, by acclaimed global architects Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), will stand 895 feet tall and offer state-of-the-art commercial offices, ground-floor retail space, and a direct connection to the one-million-square-foot Shops and Restaurants at Hudson Yards. Ten Hudson Yards features panoramic views and is one of the most unique buildings in the city, owing to its integration with the celebrated High Line, which passes through the structure of the building and will directly connect to the six-acre public plaza. The new No. 7 subway station, which opened in September, is adjacent to Hudson Yards. Ten Hudson Yards recently topped out and is scheduled to be completed early next year.
Stephen M. Ross, Chairman of Related Companies, said, “The Boston Consulting Group is widely recognized as one of the top companies to work for. The move to 10 Hudson Yards is indicative of their forward-thinking, impact-driven culture. The new building will allow BCG to create a custom environment for employees that reflects their collaborative ethos, and all within a dynamic neighborhood atmosphere with first-class amenities and convenient transportation access. We are thrilled to welcome BCG to Hudson Yards and add them to the roster of visionaries who are making the new west side their corporate home.”
Blake Hutcheson, CEO of Oxford Properties Group, said, “We are very pleased that The Boston Consulting Group has chosen to relocate to 10 Hudson Yards. As strategic advisors to premier clients around the world, we know BCG can think big, and Hudson Yards demonstrates thinking on a grand scale. Projects that change the face of a city take inspired, committed teamwork to succeed. BCG’s move to Hudson Yards demonstrates our shared commitment to these ideals. We are proud to partner with them and look forward to building a rich relationship.”
Designing the ‘Office of the Future’
Currently, BCG occupies approximately 96,500 square feet at 430 Park Avenue, where the company has been located since 2002. The firm also subleases offices from Credit Suisse Group AG at 315 Park Avenue South, in an agreement that expires in April 2017. At 10 Hudson Yards, BCG will occupy floors 42 to 47.
“Uniting the two locations is an opportunity for us to align our physical office space with new ways of working, our brand, and our values,” explained Love. “The new office will communicate the characteristics of our work and our firm like never before. It will be a flexible and adaptable environment that fosters a strong, connected community and encourages creative, team-oriented problem solving. It will also provide a dedicated space for BCG Digital Ventures, our corporate investment and incubation firm, which is rapidly expanding globally. We look forward to working with our new neighbors, the developers, and the local community to create a truly inspiring, world-class workplace.”
According to Love, the new office will convey BCG’s preeminence as a professional services firm and employer; celebrate BCG’s people and support their diversity; engage the firm’s talent to promote its thought leadership with the community; provide an environment where clients can explore new ideas, immerse themselves in world-class thinking and experience, and develop innovative strategies; encourage serendipitous interaction and connectedness by optimizing what BCG calls the “collision coefficient” of its workplace; and provide efficient, advanced, and intuitive technology.
To achieve those objectives, the design will feature:
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a light, bright, and visually open appearance
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an eclectic, non-corporate feel
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flexible spaces that support different work styles and uses
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large, fully equipped rooms for case teams that need to work together for months at a time
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a multipurpose area for social and community events that can double as a town hall for office-wide meetings
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a central hub where clients and employees can interact
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an “immersion room” that facilitates real-time sharing by surrounding participants with multiple large display screens that interact with ceiling sensors to allow virtual editing using specially designed wands
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hexagonal-shaped “venture rooms” with touch-screen monitors for accelerating the design and incubation of new businesses
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technologies enabling work anywhere, anytime, such as digital badges, mobile printing, and an app for reserving rooms and seeing who’s in the office
In addition, the office will promote the goals of wellness and sustainability (with ergonomic furniture, including treadmill work stations, energy-efficient lighting, and healthy snacks, among other things) and offer such amenities as a “grab and go” café, lounges on every floor, a wellness suite, a mother’s room, and showers/changing rooms.
“We want the new space to be a platform not only for us, but for the community we’re part of—for clients, outside guests, and neighborhood groups,” Love said. “We want to play a positive role in the broader community. We buy into Stephen Ross’s powerful vision for the development and want to contribute to it. We acknowledge the substantial support from the city, state, and federal governments for the neighborhood and look forward to being active and engaged residents.”
Consistently ranked as one of the best companies to work for in the U.S., BCG had an unusually inclusive process for soliciting input on the workplace strategy from employees at all levels. For eight weeks over the summer, the firm conducted a survey and held focus groups and work sessions to gather the views of virtually all its New York employees. It also visited other companies’ offices on the West Coast and in Europe for ideas and inspiration. About 70 employees actively participated in co-creating the office strategy.
“We developed a vision grounded in the collective ideas of multiple stakeholders—from consulting staff to business service team members,” said Love. “The process we went through was about engaging our employees so that every voice was heard. We are putting into practice the idea that people need to be authors of their own space—both now in the design and going forward in how they use the space. It will be flexible—what we are calling ‘hackable’—and able to constantly change to reflect uses and needs that we can’t even imagine today.”
