A community development group hopes to create a new small business and light industrial center in the thick of an outlying Boston neighborhood, far from downtown and about two miles from the nearest highway exit – raising a host of logistical and lifestyle questions.
The Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has been marketing a former meat-packing plant to startups and smaller companies involved in the food industry – from entrepreneurs needing space to develop their products, to established businesses needing more refrigeration space.
The redevelopment of the former Pearl Meat Packing Inc. property at 196 Quincy St. in the Grove Hall area of Dorchester is part of a larger effort to revitalize the stretch of Quincy Street between Columbia Road and Blue Hill Avenue. The $53 million Quincy Heights project, which includes the 22,000-square-foot Pearl Meats building, would involve redevelopment of the light industrial space, the creation of a culinary arts training center that could act as a feeder for the small business center, and 129 affordable housing units.
According to the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s website, the entire project includes 156,817 square feet of commercial and residential space.
The Quincy Heights area is zoned for light industrial uses. But it is situated smack in the middle of a residential neighborhood, leaving the city with some concerns about truck traffic clogging the area’s small streets, according to Evelyn Friedman, director of the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development.
Pros & Cons
Quincy Street is already used as a cut-through from Columbia Road to Blue Hill Avenue. The city’s transportation department is currently considering methods of lessening the impact of added vehicles.
For comparison’s sake, grab a map, go north on Blue Hill Avenue from Quincy Street and bang a right on Magazine Street. That brings you to Newmarket Square, the city’s central light industrial district, just a little more than a mile away from 196 Quincy St. The dozens of businesses that call this area home include hot dog purveyor Boston Speed Dog, American Nut & Chocolate Co., fresh and frozen seafood manufacturer and distributor Slade Gorton and commercial food distributor Peninsula of Boston.
Newmarket Square is roughly bordered by Magazine Street, Melnea Cass Boulevard, Norfolk Avenue and the Southeast Expressway. Newmarket Square is not in the middle of a residential neighborhood like Quincy Heights which will become an even more densely-populated area once the 129 new housing units are built.
Joel Miller, president of Boston-based industrial and commercial brokerage Perishable Management Services and a leading broker in the Newmarket area, said that in his experience, neighbors in residential areas can only take listening to trucks constantly entering and exiting and backing up and delivering goods for so long.
“Ultimately people are going to get tired of hearing the refrigeration units, the constant deliveries and trucks backing up … behind school buses going up Blue Hill Avenue,” Miller offered. “You have to realize hours of operation, the kinds of trucks, where staging areas are. Pearl Meats was there before the houses and most neighbors were there. You don’t know all the problems Pearl ran into with late night deliveries, people having their windows open in the summertime. If you’re running a business [you], have to look at all these things.”
Still, so far Friedman said she has not heard of anyone voicing concerns about living close to an industrial building that may likely have potentially less-than-desirable food uses, or which may present neighborhood noise issues.
“In this neighborhood, people are so desirous of having jobs that I think they’re quite willing to make concessions close by,” Friedman told Banker & Tradesman.
“It depends on what types of activities are going on in the community [for the new industrial space to be successful],” Miller added. “They need to service the neighborhood. You can have small businesses, mom-and-pop shops, incubators, in that type of setting fine. But once you start pushing any kind of real volume, that becomes a problem. Dorchester Bay has been a successful [community development corporation], and I expect they’ll be successful at it. You have to give people the incentive and, say, ‘Hey, we want you here.’”
Funding Questions
At least one Newmarket Square business relocated away from the more residential intersection of Magazine Street and Norfolk Avenue into the more industrial 54 Newmarket Square, in large part because of traffic issues – similar to concerns also raised regarding the new industrial area.
Hollis Leary, president of Liberty Construction Services, said the buses from the nearby Samuel W. Mason elementary School were constantly backing up traffic and making it slow going for his company’s delivery and construction trucks. And as he tried to grow his business, the more residential part of Newmarket Square was not the place to be.
But traffic issues don’t seem to have affected overall vacancy rates in the Newmarket area, according to Miller. Vacancy rates in the Newmarket area are so low that you can usually count on your hands the number of significant spaces available for lease or purchase.
When space does open up, rates are about $12- to $15-per-square-foot for higher-end properties with updated refrigeration systems and other specialized features. For a “plain vanilla industrial box” rents are $8.50- to $9-per-foot. And those rates don’t fluctuate much, because demand is always there to absorb the space, and there is enough industrial and office space to meet it, Miller told Banker & Tradesman.
“We have a very healthy business environment,” Miller opined. “You have a core of business and property owners in the area.”
Dorchester Bay’s project hinges on several funding channels. The city of Boston has committed $1.5 million to the project so far. The commonwealth has also committed $1.5 million in grants, as well as $16.5 million in low-income housing tax credits in place for 15 years. MassHousing will provide the organization with a $16 million mortgage. But the biggest funding source would be a $20 million Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Of that, $12.3 million would go directly to the housing component.
HUD will announce the Choice awards in September. If awarded to the Quincy Heights redevelopment, the project could go out to bid by late fall with an 18-month timeline commencing in early 2012, Friedman said. Rhonda Siciliano, public affairs officer for HUD’s New England region, said she could not comment on Dorchester Bay EDC’s application.
Dorchester Bay EDC has had interest from potential tenants, but no one has signed on yet, Friedman added. Dorchester Bay EDC officials could not be reached by press time. However, the group’s website includes this blurb about the property:
“We are working with two potential tenants, with a ‘green’ focus to their [businesses], all willing to hire untrained new local workers, including those with criminal records,” according to Dorchester Bay EDC’s website. “We are currently working with a ‘green’ laundry/cleaning company who wants to consolidate their operations. A second potential manufacturer is developing new thermal window shades."
