$60M SUFFOLK HQ A REAL ‘FIT’ FOR ROXBURY
‘Exactly what employees want’
The first part of a new $60 million expansion of Suffolk Construction’s Roxbury headquarters was unveiled yesterday during an event that highlighted the building’s cutting-edge amenities, including a salon, a massage room and a fully outfitted gym.
“We went through a thoughtful process, we interviewed our colleagues, we asked them what was important to them,” Suffolk CEO John Fish said. “The end product reflects exactly what the employees really, truly want.”
The new addition — phase one of the expansion — is a 38,000-square-foot, three-story building on Allerton Street in Roxbury. The new building also includes a large, open auditorium, an improved cafeteria, and a gym and fitness studio for group classes. Along with the salon and massage room, there is space for a dry-cleaning service and an onsite nurse practitioner, though Suffolk said those services won’t be staffed full time. “The massage room, the hair salon, the dry-cleaning area, is probably about 1 or 2 percent of the overall gross square footage,” Fish said. “But the benefits it provides to our teammates is huge.”
As it unveils its new headquarters, Suffolk is also pushing the definition of entrenched corporate events. Three big-screen televisions with the image of a red ribbon were on display yesterday instead of the traditional ribbon. As Fish and other executives urged the crowd of employees and elected officials to cheer louder, digital scissors cut the animated ribbon.
At the groundbreaking for the project last year, Fish and Mayor Martin J. Walsh used virtual reality headsets instead of real shovels and dirt.
Suffolk, which is privately held, takes in $3.3 billion in revenue annually, Fish said, and has 2,200 employees across 10 offices. In the Boston area, Suffolk is building the enormous casino and hotel Wynn Boston Harbor, as well as the addition to Boston Children’s Hospital and the Four Seasons Hotel and apartments in the Back Bay that will be New England’s tallest residential building when it is completed.
Fish said Suffolk is investing heavily in technology that will allow the company to more accurately predict the numbers that matter to customers, including price and timeline.
“At the end of the day, it all comes down to dollars and cents. Clients will only appreciate and respect and pay for things they think are creating value,” Fish said. “It’s our responsibility, as a commodity, to demonstrate to our clients our ability to create value, and we’re thinking very, very carefully about what we can do to continue doing things differently.”