Boston, Mass., May. 13, 2025 — At its annual award gala on April 7, the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Massachusetts presented Haley & Aldrich with a 2025 Engineering Excellence Gold Award for the firm’s work on Lyrik Back Bay Air Rights Parcel 12, the first successful air rights project to take shape over the Massachusetts Turnpike in 40 years.
The ACEC Massachusetts Engineering Excellence Award recognizes projects in the state that demonstrate exceptional innovation, complexity, achievement, and value. Those traits are embodied in Lyrik Back Bay Air Rights Parcel 12, a combined infrastructure and mixed-use commercial development that reconnects Boston’s Fenway and Back Bay neighborhoods.
Haley & Aldrich served as the primary geotechnical consultant for the project. Planned and executed in collaboration with state and local agencies, the development consists of two new high-rise buildings connected by a public plaza built on a deck over Interstate I-90 and railroad lines. Haley & Aldrich advised its client Samuels & Associates/P-12 Property LLC by identifying foundation design and construction methodologies that could address the challenging site and subsurface conditions, variable structural demands, and the many constraints on and restrictions of the work. The firm also served as the support-of-excavation designer for a critical excavation adjacent to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) railroad tracks.
Haley & Aldrich has provided geotechnical consulting services on innovative foundation and other underground engineering projects in the Boston area for more than 65 years. “It’s an honor to collaborate with a large team of skilled partners to bring a project of this scale and complexity to life,” said Marya Gorczyca, P.E., a Haley & Aldrich senior principal consultant and leader of the project team. “We appreciate the opportunity to draw on our expertise to realize this transformational development, which brings economic opportunity, public improvements, and transportation infrastructure upgrades to its neighborhood.”
To realize this project, Haley & Aldrich and the many other firms involved contended with numerous engineering, design, logistical, and construction challenges. Given the site conditions, the team had little workspace and land for foundations. The highly variable subsurface conditions required Haley & Aldrich to combine multiple foundation types for support. Haley & Aldrich also provided near-constant review of remote monitoring instrumentation data to prevent impacts on transportation system operations during the construction phase. The team completed the project with minimal disruption to MBTA rail passengers and I-90 drivers, briefly stopping service on the highway only in the middle of the night to install massive steel beams.
Lyrik Air Rights Parcel 12 reconnects commercial areas and neighborhoods and has attracted major corporations as tenants — including The LEGO Group’s North American headquarters and CarGurus’ global headquarters. It features a 20-story office building over a two-level below-grade parking garage, a 13-story hotel — the largest hotel in Citizen M’s portfolio and Boston’s first fully electrified high-rise — and 35,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space.
Lyrik Air Rights Parcel 12 also incorporates transportation upgrades and new safety measures, including protected bike lanes, widened sidewalks, updated crossing signals, a new sheltered MBTA bus stop, and a new headhouse for and restoration of an abandoned pedestrian tunnel that connects to the Hynes Convention Center MBTA Green Line Station.
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