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It’s not the second headquarters that Boston had offered to host, but Amazon is starting construction on a new office building in the city Tuesday. Work on the 17-story building in the Seaport began with an 11 a.m. groundbreaking ceremony. Two of the floors are planned for restaurants and retail, but the rest of the building will house about 2,000 Amazon employees working in fields including machine learning, speech science, cloud computing and robotics engineering. “Amazon is investing in Massachusetts and the greater Boston area because of the exceptionally talented workforce that exists here,” said Mike Touloumtzis, who represented Amazon at the groundbreaking ceremony. “This building that’s going up here represents something that’s important to the future of our city. The numbers are big, you’ve heard about it. Almost 2,000 and opportunities. Just as important, Boston is becoming a leader in the field of artificial intelligence, robotics and digital health care,” said Mayor Marty Walsh. The building, which is expected to be completed around 2021, is located at 111 Harbor Way. That’s block L4 of the expansive Boston Seaport Project, a 23-acre development project. Construction of the building is forecast to create 800 jobs, BPDA documents have said.As part of the deal, Amazon and the developer proposed a payment in lieu of taxes agreement with the city in which property taxes would be reduced by $5 million per year for 15 years. That part of the agreement would be conditional on Amazon meeting the job creation schedule, city documents indicated.Gov. Charlie Baker also spoke at Tuesday’s ceremony about the state’s contributions to the negotiation process and investments in infrastructure.“Everything that we’re putting into this project relates to transportation betterments that will certainly enhance the nature of this project, but will also provide public benefits to everybody who works or who lives or who access transportation or who gets in and out of here – either publicly or privately,” Baker said.Amazon has previously said the new jobs in this building will be in addition to more than 3,500 jobs it has created in Massachusetts since 2011. The company’s existing Boston-area teams focus on Alexa, Amazon Web Services and Audible.“With this new office, Amazon will be adding 430,000 square feet of state-of-the-art workspace,” said Touloumtzis.A shower of yellow confetti celebrated the official start of work on the project, before politicians and others had a chance to turn over a shovel-full of ceremonial dirt for the traditional photo-op.

It’s not the second headquarters that Boston had offered to host, but Amazon is starting construction on a new office building in the city Tuesday.

Work on the 17-story building in the Seaport began with an 11 a.m. groundbreaking ceremony. Two of the floors are planned for restaurants and retail, but the rest of the building will house about 2,000 Amazon employees working in fields including machine learning, speech science, cloud computing and robotics engineering.

“Amazon is investing in Massachusetts and the greater Boston area because of the exceptionally talented workforce that exists here,” said Mike Touloumtzis, who represented Amazon at the groundbreaking ceremony.

“This building that’s going up here represents something that’s important to the future of our city. The numbers are big, you’ve heard about it. Almost 2,000 and opportunities. Just as important, Boston is becoming a leader in the field of artificial intelligence, robotics and digital health care,” said Mayor Marty Walsh.

The building, which is expected to be completed around 2021, is located at 111 Harbor Way. That’s block L4 of the expansive Boston Seaport Project, a 23-acre development project.

Construction of the building is forecast to create 800 jobs, BPDA documents have said.

As part of the deal, Amazon and the developer proposed a payment in lieu of taxes agreement with the city in which property taxes would be reduced by $5 million per year for 15 years. That part of the agreement would be conditional on Amazon meeting the job creation schedule, city documents indicated.

Gov. Charlie Baker also spoke at Tuesday’s ceremony about the state’s contributions to the negotiation process and investments in infrastructure.

“Everything that we’re putting into this project relates to transportation betterments that will certainly enhance the nature of this project, but will also provide public benefits to everybody who works or who lives or who access transportation or who gets in and out of here – either publicly or privately,” Baker said.

Amazon has previously said the new jobs in this building will be in addition to more than 3,500 jobs it has created in Massachusetts since 2011. The company’s existing Boston-area teams focus on Alexa, Amazon Web Services and Audible.

“With this new office, Amazon will be adding 430,000 square feet of state-of-the-art workspace,” said Touloumtzis.

Amazon groundbreaking

David Bienick/WCVB

Gov. Charlie Baker, Mayor Marty Walsh and others participate in a groundbreaking ceremony

A shower of yellow confetti celebrated the official start of work on the project, before politicians and others had a chance to turn over a shovel-full of ceremonial dirt for the traditional photo-op.

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