Mill Creek Residential is expected to break ground in 2017 on a 270-unit apartment complex approved in August under Framingham’s new downtown overlay district that encourages multifamily development.
Framingham’s attempts to encourage multifamily development and a more lively commercial and arts scene in its central business district is starting to pay off.
Following a pattern that’s being repeated in communities from Quincy to Lowell, developers are pursuing large-scale residential projects that will add hundreds of residents and, officials hope, a 24-7 atmosphere that will benefit the office and retail market in coming years.
Living up to their promise for fast-track permitting, town officials took just 37 days to approve Mill Creek Residential’s application to build 270 apartments at the site of a former Harley Davidson dealership this summer. That’s 23 days fewer than the town’s 60-day target review period for large developments.
“That speed is an indicator of the town’s commitment to this direction for the downtown,” said Arthur Robert, Framingham’s director of community and economic development.
Mill Creek’s project may be just the first step as multifamily developers show increased interest in downtown parcels. Wood Partners, an Atlanta-based multifamily developer with local offices in Lexington, has approached Framingham officials with preliminary plans for a large-scale residential development on Concord and Park streets, Robert said. The properties currently contain a pair of century-old bank buildings and surface parking.
“We’re excited about another large project that would draw not just new people in the downtown, but also fill an important gap in our streetscape,” Robert said. “As we draw more people into the downtown, we expect demand for different types of retail services to increase.”
The “residential before retail” strategy is designed to attract transit commuters looking for lower housing costs and who will eventually patronize businesses such as Jack’s Abby, the craft brewery that’s nearly doubling the size of its 67,000-square-foot facility on Clinton Street that opened last January. Office employment is expanding at local companies such as CommCreative, a marketing agency, which relocated and expanded in September after purchasing a new 11,000 headquarters at 75 Fountain St., a former shoe and auto factory.
Restoring A Blighted Gateway
Framingham’s town meeting approved in October 2015 a new zoning overlay for a three-block section of downtown within a 10-minute walk of the MBTA commuter rail station. The rezoning followed a Metropolitan Area Planning Council study that showed flat population growth in the downtown.
Not wanting to get left behind by other suburbs’ embrace of mixed-use development, economic officials sponsored a new district that encourages transit-oriented multifamily projects surrounding the MBTA station.
Framingham Downtown Renaissance, a nonprofit founded in 2012, supports the nearly 100 businesses in the downtown area by sponsoring seven annual events such as The Six Mile Moment, a street festival that coincides with the Boston Marathon, and a restaurant week coming up in February. The downtown group recruited local artist Sorin Bica to paint a building mural at the crossroads of Routes 126 and 135.
“It was really a sad, neglected, blighted area right in the heart of downtown,” said Holli Andrews, director of Framingham Downtown Renaissance. “That intersection now is a colorful gateway.”
Public and private investment in the downtown has totaled $56 million in recent years, including a $10 million Massachusetts Department of Transportation project to redesign main roads and improve streetscapes, and $30 million spent by Eversource on infrastructure work.
Office Parks Count On Value Proposition
For all of the attention paid to downtown, Framingham’s largest job centers remain clustered in office parks that rely upon their proximity to Route 9 and the Massachusetts Turnpike and employ thousands at major corporate employers including TJX Cos., Staples and Bose. TJX Cos. has submitted plans for a new 6-story parking garage and 54,000 square foot conference center at its 41-acre property on the Framingham-Natick line.
But while developers in such suburbs as Waltham and Burlington have refreshed office parks in recent years by adding housing and retail, no plans for mixed-use redevelopments are currently being considered in Framingham.
Vacancies in the Framingham-Natick office submarket were 8.3 percent in the fourth quarter, according to Boston-based Encompass Real Estate Strategies, with 133,000 square feet of negative absorption in the past 12 months. But several leases expected to be signed in the coming weeks should tip the market into positive absorption, said Kevin Hanna, an executive managing director for Cushman & Wakefield.
The opportunity for Framingham landlords is to appeal to class A office tenants looking for rents up to 35 percent lower than the central Route 128 submarket, Hanna said. That could be a hard sell in a market where many large suburban tenants are eyeing relocations or expansions in Boston, Cambridge and inner-ring suburbs, according to commercial brokers.
“We’re hoping we’ll see some migration from 128 and there will be some folks that recognize the value,” Hanna said.
