For more than a century, Gillette has been making razor blades in South Boston, near the Fort Point Channel. Now, the company is preparing to make something quite different there: a whole new neighborhood.
P&G Gillette on Friday filed a long-awaited master plan with city officials for its 31-acre campus along the southern edge of the channel, a block or so from the Broadway T station on the Red Line. It’s the latest milestone in the company’s efforts to redo its two Massachusetts sites, as it pulls its manufacturing work out of South Boston to make way for this ambitious 20-building redevelopment. Much of the manufacturing will shift to Gillette’s other local property, a 150-acre site in Andover, with a groundbreaking scheduled to take place on that expansion next Thursday.
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The 5.7-million-square-foot development in South Boston could take a decade or more to fully build out. The total vision includes 1,800 housing units across nine buildings, or 1.7 million square feet, and another 3.5 million square feet of commercial space for offices and labs as well as 200,000 square feet of shops and restaurants and 250,000 square feet of hotel space. The buildings would range in height from four or five stories, along the channel, to taller buildings such as a 320-foot-high residential tower near the T station. The project also includes a 6.5-acre public park along the channel.
“We’ve long been proud of our heritage here in Massachusetts,” said Kara Buckley, vice president of community affairs at Gillette. “We’re excited about the legacy we could leave behind through this plan.”
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Gillette, part of Procter & Gamble since 2005, employs about 1,150 people in South Boston. That number includes roughly 400 people in manufacturing — all of whom, Gillette says, will have a job in Andover if they want one. Manufacturing employees will start moving in one to two years. Meanwhile, Gillette is looking at leasing real estate in South Boston to accommodate roughly 750 white-collar workers for its headquarters and technical innovation center where research and engineering takes place, though it’s possible they could remain on the property as it gets redeveloped.
The fundamental real estate shifts were first announced in October 2023. Since that time, Gillette has sought feedback from the public, holding 15 community meetings over the past two years and working with development consultant Leggat McCall, architectural firm CBT, and others to design this new neighborhood.
The master plan needs city approval, but so will most new individual buildings at a later date.
CBT urban design director Kishore Varanasi said the master plan is designed to link with other improvements along the channel, as well as open up new streets through the fenced-off campus to the waterfront. A key tenet in the design, he said, was “to not think of this as an enclave in its own right but a pretty significant piece of a larger puzzle.”
Varanasi said most of the site will be raised up by at least six feet and will also feature an extension of a berm planned for that side of the channel. Much of the property is covered by the state’s Chapter 91 tidelands law, which limits how much can be built near the water. As a result, half of the 31 acres would be open to the public, though that includes new streets, sidewalks, and plazas as well as the open space.
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Gillette also wants to ensure the redevelopment includes spaces for civic and cultural uses.
To Kate Dineen, chief executive of business group A Better City, the Gillette master plan addresses key city priorities such as building more mixed-income housing, climate resiliency, and more public waterfront access. In particular, she cited the waterfront park as a “marquee investment” for the city. (Buckley is a vice chair on ABC’s board.)
“An important element of feedback they received from the community [is] they don’t want cookie-cutter development,” Dineen said. “They want vibrancy and uniqueness. I think you see that represented across this master plan.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.