General Electric downsizing Boston HQ plans

Three years after announcing that it was selling its Fairfield headquarters and moving its corporate operations to Boston, General Electric is looking to sell its future headquarters property and scale back its operations within that city.

According to a Boston Globe report, GE will use the sale of its Fort Point parcel to reimburse Massachusetts”™ state government for the $87.4 million in incentives used to lure the company”™s headquarters out of Connecticut. The company also scrapped the property tax incentive agreement that encouraged it to move to Fort Point for a proposed 12-story headquarters complex.

The original incentive agreement with the administration of Gov. Charlie Baker was worth as much as $120 million in state funds, but GE stopped submitting for reimbursements a few months ago as it began to work out the new deal that was revealed on Thursday.

GE now plans to move into two brick buildings at Necco Court in South Boston, where it will employ 250 people rather than the 800 it envisioned when it agreed to its relocation. The current GE staff now works in rented offices near Necco Court.

Since its announcement that it was leaving Fairfield, GE has been pummeled with declining stock prices and embarrassing accounting problems. The company has also divested some of its business lines in an effort to streamline operations and focus on profitable endeavors.

“GE has gone through a significant transformation,” said Ann Klee, a GE vice president. “It is a fundamentally different company from when we moved here more than two years ago, a smaller and more focused company.”

Despite the abrupt shift in its plans, the state has not badmouthed GE. Lizzy Guyton, a spokesperson for Gov. Baker, said the administration welcomed GE”™s “ongoing contribution to the growing innovation economy.”