A $1 billion construction project over the Massachusetts Turnpike near Fenway Park is on hold because demand for commercial lab space has waned.
Company officials at IQHQ, the developer of the Fenway Center , told the Boston Globe that while a deck spanning the highway was close to complete, the plans for a 22-story and a 12-story tower it was meant to support are not going forward.
Instead, construction will remain on pause until the developer finds a tenant willing to commit to leasing at least 50% of the nearly 1 million square feet of what was initially intended to be lab space.
"We have no plans to go vertical at this point," Tracy Murphy, president of IQHQ, told the newspaper. "Given lending market conditions, we're going to sit and evaluate once the podium is done in the first quarter."
In 2021, IQHQ signed a $55 million air rights deal with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation for the towers, the Globe reported at the time. It was the largest air rights project since the 1980s, according to the company.
The deck, the first phase of the project, required the closure of one lane of traffic in each direction on the Mass. Pike so crews could dig foundations.
IQHQ lists three developments in the Fenway area on its website, part of what it terms the "FWD District." In addition to Fenway Center, the district includes 109 Brookline Ave., a 10-story lab building that was completed earlier this year, according to city planning records, which connects to 20 Overland St., a 5-story office and lab building.
The developer has a large campus under development in Cambridge near the Alewife MBTA station and two additional properties on North Beacon Street in Brighton that it plans to develop in the future.
A sidewalk on Brookline Avenue adjacent to the planned Fenway Center, which will span the Massachusetts Turnpike, is under construction on Nov. 29, 2025.(Anne Brennan/MassLive)
However, demand for commercial office and lab space has declined in Boston, where companies have reduced their footprints since the COVID-19 pandemic. Many lab buildings constructed in recent years remain largely or entirely vacant, including 109 Brookline Ave., according to the Globe.
Fenway Center developer John Rosenthal told the newspaper that the project will likely still move forward at some point, and that he was optimistic construction would move fast once a tenant is secured.
"Real estate is cyclical. I firmly believe that the towers will get built. They will house over 3,000 people every day. But I can't say when," he said. "As soon as we have a significant tenant, we'll build."
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