Hasbro will relocate its headquarters from Pawtucket to Boston’s Seaport District by the end of 2026, the toymaking giant announced earlier this month. For state and local officials in Rhode Island, the announcement comes as a disappointment.
“It is disheartening to see a company so deeply rooted in our community choose to turn its back on that history,” Pawtucket Mayor Donald Grebien told WJAR. “This is a painful reality for the people of Pawtucket, who stood by Hasbro for over a century.”
“We maintain that Rhode Island is the best place for Hasbro to call home, and many more companies agree with that sentiment,” Gov. Dan McKee said in a news release.
The new location at 400 Summer St. will serve as the company’s headquarters for its board games, toys and licensing businesses, and it will house “at least 700 full-time employees expected to transition from Rhode Island to Boston,” according to Hasbro.
Since it was founded in 1923, the company has been based in Pawtucket. Up until 2023, the company also worked out of an office in downtown Providence, but later that year, Hasbro announced it was going to consolidate that office with its Pawtucket location, The Herald previously reported.
About a year ago, the company began considering a move out of Rhode Island — news that caught state and local officials by surprise, as text messages analyzed by the Providence Journal revealed.
Following the initial rumblings, state and local officials made numerous attempts to keep the toymaker in Rhode Island.
“Pawtucket did absolutely everything possible to keep Hasbro here,” including creating “a bold and comprehensive proposal” that offered a new site by the Blackstone River for the company’s headquarters, Grebien said in the statement.
Last November, Rhode Island’s I-195 Redevelopment District Commission also voted unanimously to offer Hasbro a parcel of Providence land for its headquarters.
But ultimately, Boston prevailed. The city began trying to attract Hasbro in 2018 and pursued the company further last year with a variety of incentives, including tax breaks.
Once the relocation is complete, Hasbro will have “no corporate footprint in Rhode Island,” Andrea Snyder, the company’s spokesperson, told WPRI.
Hasbro did not respond to a request for comment.
The company has a long history of philanthropy in Rhode Island that the toymaker has said will continue despite its move.
In 1994, Hasbro donated $2.5 million to the construction of Hasbro Children’s Hospital, a teaching hospital for Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School.
Without Hasbro’s support, “the vision of a pediatric hospital in Rhode Island would not have become reality three decades ago,” wrote Elena Falcone-Relvas, a spokesperson for Hasbro Children’s and Community Health Institute, in an email to The Herald. Beyond financial support and toy donations, Falcone-Relvas commented on Hasbro “employees’ deep volunteerism and its leadership’s ongoing service to our boards and committees.”
Hasbro also played “an integral role” in the establishment of the Partnership for Rhode Island, a nonprofit roundtable composed of state business leaders, which supports K-12 education, as well as workforce and infrastructure development. Partnership members include University President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20, as well as Brown Chancellor and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan ’81 P’14 P’19.
In the company’s statement, Hasbro promised to “continue to support Hasbro Children’s Hospital with annual donations” and continue “recruiting from Rhode Island’s colleges and universities.”
“We would expect (Hasbro’s) commitment to the hospital to always be there,” Falcone-Relvas added.
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“There is no question that our hearts are broken by this decision,” Grebien said in his statement. “However, when Pawtucket is faced with adversity, it strengthens our resiliency, and we come back even stronger.”
State officials will work together “to create a plan to revitalize this prime real estate for exciting mixed-use development opportunities,” he added.
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