Back Bay’s Prudential Center complex carries 653,000 sqft in its retail component, spread beneath and around four BXP office towers, connected since 1993 by a concourse that replaced what had been a set of separate open plazas since Prudential Tower’s 1965 completion. The retail concourse traded for years as “Shops at Prudential Center,” a name now retired in favor of the Prudential Center brand covering the whole complex.
Saks Fifth Avenue anchors a tenant register built for the office and hotel population around it rather than for destination shopping: Sephora, MAC, Aritzia, Madewell, Warby Parker and Polo Ralph Lauren sit alongside direct-to-consumer names like Bonobos, Buck Mason and Marine Layer that have moved into physical retail through exactly this kind of urban, foot-traffic-dense format.
Life Time and Dick’s House of Sport occupy larger-format space that would be unusual in a pure retail center, a mix that works here because more than 18,000 office tenants and hotel guests from the adjacent Sheraton supply weekday traffic a suburban mall would need a fashion anchor to generate on its own.
Direct connections to Prudential and Hynes Convention Center stations on the MBTA Green Line, plus a climate-controlled walk to Copley Place and Back Bay Station, mean the retail component competes less with other Boston malls than with the ground-floor space inside Copley Place itself, its immediate neighbor under separate ownership.
