In 2003, Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray, then mayor of Worcester, posed with a sledgehammer in front of a moribund shopping mall in the heart of downtown. The mall, which last did business as Worcester Common Outlets, had languished for years. Its then-owner didn’t seem motivated to refurbish or sell the property.
Murray wrote a white paper to the City Council proposing demolition of the mall. He also took the unusual step of posing for a photo for the Worcester Business Journal in front of a section of the mall that had obliterated an east-west connecting street. There was a psychology to this: The mall’s design, which walled off the east side of the city from the west side, was seen by critics of the city’s sporadic proposals for downtown revitalization as the white elephant in the room. Nothing would gel in Worcester until the 40-year-old mall and parking garage were demolished, they said.
Today, the mall and part of the garage are all but demolished, and the new buildings of CitySquare are going up (see InsideTrack).
The east-west connector street will return as Mercantile Street. And it seems as if all over the city, other new projects abound, most of them under the aegis of the Worcester Business Development Corporation (WBDC).
Biotech Building Planned
The WBDC has taken an active stake in Worcester development for more than 30 years. In the early 1980s, it took on the role of developer of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Park on Plantation Street, a major north-south corridor. The park was designed as an initiative to bring “clean jobs” to Worcester to replace the manufacturing jobs that had all but disappeared, and to establish a synergy with the neighboring UMass Medical School.
Today, the park has five buildings, and the WBDC is planning for Biotech VI, which will be a 98,670-square-foot building with 355 parking spaces. An adjacent garage will support the on-campus development of the Albert Sherman Center, a 480,000-square-foot research facility being developed by UMass. The garage and the Sherman Center are expected to open at the end of this year. The WBDC has also retained rights to develop a 62,000-square-foot building behind Biotech VI.
On the central business district’s north side, the WBDC completed environmental work at the former Worcester Vocational High School at the corner of Grove and Salisbury streets. The WBDC contributed $400,000 to the cleanup effort, which cost about $1.2 million. The property is currently under agreement with WinnDevelopment, which intends to develop 84 units of mixed-income, “55 and over” housing as part of the Gateway Park Master Plan.
On the city’s south side, the WBDC has completed the demolition and environmental cleanup of the former Nissen Bakery Building at 75 Quinsigamond Ave. New Garden Park, a nonprofit supporting organization of the WBDC, received a $400,000 Brownfields Cleanup Grant from the city. The property, located near 1-290 and the intersection of Route 146, is now ready for redevelopment, and a plan is expected to be completed in 2012.
