The MBTA recently put two very different parcels out to bid for potential developers to purchase and, hopefully, create some economic development at the underutilized sites in Boston and Newburyport.
The state’s mass transit agency is seeking $2 million for about 21 acres in the Readville section of Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood, and asking $1.38 million for 11.11 acres of land adjacent to Newburyport’s commuter rail station.
In Readville, the MBTA has finished the environmental remediation of an area known as the Readville Yard 5, which sits in a heavily residential area at the border of Hyde Park and Dedham. The 21-acre, ice cream cone-shaped parcel is just south of West Milton Street and west of Sprague Street adjacent to the Readville commuter rail station.
From the MBTA’s perspective, the development program proposed for the site should incorporate some form of renewable energy, especially solar panels, into the project’s design. The Dedham side of Readville Yard 5 is currently under development for a photovoltaic solar array to offer renewable electrical energy for the MBTA’s use.
The Boston acreage is available for “traditional development,” according to the bid invitation the MBTA circulated, but prospective bidders are also encouraged “to propose development that consists entirely of green, renewable energy development such as a [photovoltaic solar array] for example.”
Some Readville residents have lived adjacent to the for-sale parcel for a long, long time, and will have a lot to say about what gets built. Current zoning allows for office space, laboratory research, restaurants, trade schools and other uses. But the community is less concerned with the actual uses on the site, which has been zoned for light industrial uses, than with the impacts things like increased traffic will have on local streets, said Dave McNulty, the neighborhood’s liaison to City Hall and Mayor Thomas Menino.
“The focus of the community was always making sure [the site] was cleaned up properly,” McNulty said in a recent interview. “Whatever is proposed there will go through a pretty intense community process. Neighborhood residents will have a strong say over what goes there.”
If a potential developer follows the MBTA’s guidelines and goes for a mostly or entirely renewable energy project, that would be a less intrusive use that will generate less traffic and noise than, say, a manufacturing operation, according to Mark Boyle, assistant general manager for development for the MBTA.
Newburyport Has A Plan
Residents will likely have less of a concern over what is built next to the Newburyport commuter rail station since the kind of transit-oriented development the city wants to see built will already be in a primarily industrial area where there are few, if any, residential neighbors.
That’s part of the reason Andrew Port, Newburyport’s planning director, hopes a developer will propose a mixed-use residential and retail project on the 11.11-acre parcel, currently an underutilized commuter parking lot and other unused land along Boston Way.
If a developer were to propose a mixed-use project, the MBTA parcel alone would likely accommodate about 100 units with ancillary retail in four- or five-story buildings, Port said. However, there’s a nearby building and land that houses ambulances awaiting dispatch. If that operation were relocated or incorporated into a proposed project, it could provide space for an additional 20 units, possibly more, Port told Banker & Tradesman. There’s also an old railroad depot building on the site he said could be incorporated as a restaurant or café.
The city is planning to create a 40R “smart growth” zoning overlay district for the MBTA parcel. However planners want to wait and see what proposals come in before creating the overlay that would likely limit the number of units to be built and require a certain number of residences to be classified as affordable housing. If the city waits until after the proposals are submitted to the MBTA to create the zoning overlay district, the city can evaluate all proposals without excluding any. Then, Port and his colleagues could work with a selected developer to plan for the appropriate number of units at the site, Port said.
This is the second time in two years the MBTA has attempted to unload the Newburyport parcel and generate revenue for the cash-strapped agency through non-fare revenue.
However, last year, the minimum bid was $1.57 million. But that bid invitation stipulated that a developer would have to pay the MBTA additional funds if the project consisted of gross building square footage in excess of 80,000 square feet. The successful bidder would have been required to pay the MBTA a “value added payment” of $15 for every additional square-foot of space built within ten 10 business days of the Certificate of Occupancy’s issuance. So, for development of a 100,000-square-foot project on the property, the additional payment would have been $300,000, according to last May’s bid invitation.
This year, the initial price has dropped, but there’s still a value-added payment associated with the project. The threshold has been set at 60 units – for every unit that receives a certificate of occupancy after the first 60, the developer would be required to pay the MBTA $23,000 per unit.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a back-door way to get back to the original sales price,” said the MBTA’s Boyle. Instead, with more units, “the value of the real estate increases from the purchase price … so we should share in that increased value.”
Bids for the Readville parcel are due June 26, and Newburyport’s are due June 27.
Email: jcronin@thewarrengroup.com
