A subsidiary of health care giant UnitedHealth Group is taking a giant leap from the suburbs to relocate to Boston’s Fenway neighborhood, with plans to move 400 employees to new office space and hire an additional 400.
Optum, the data services arm of national health insurer UnitedHealth Group, will be the anchor tenant in Van Ness, one of the Fenway’s newest residential-and-office buildings, occupying 125,000 square feet of space.
Optum was started as the health services arm of UnitedHealth Group, which also owns insurance giant UnitedHealthcare. The company was hired in 2014 by the state to fix the beleaguered health care marketplace.
“We’re experiencing very rapid growth in the Boston area,” said Matt Stearns, a spokesman for Optum. “It makes sense for us to bring together a large number of our people into a collaborative hub in an up-and-coming neighborhood to drive innovation and technical (partnerships).”
Optum will move to the new space at 1325 Boylston St. in the spring from offices in Wakefield, Waltham and Brighton. The company said the majority of its workforce of 400 in the Boston area would be moving to the Fenway location.
The company also plans to hire another 400 people to be ahoused in the building, mainly to accommodate a growing list of clients in the Boston area and to attract technology talent.
Internationally, Optum has 100,000 employees.
Van Ness, which opened in May, is a mix of residential and office space, featuring a shared ground floor space occupied by City Target. The upper stories include 172 luxury apartments and 237,000 square feet of office space.
Date: February 10, 2016