The developer of the former Polaroid campus in Waltham plans to begin construction on the first phase of a nearly 1.3 million-square-foot mixed-use project in the spring, with no tenants yet on board.
The first phase of Sam Park’s project will put 120,000 square feet of office space in an existing building and demolish three buildings to make way for 160,000 square feet of retail.
Park announced the timeline at a NAIOP panel this morning, where the developer of Cambridge’s NorthPoint was also on-hand to make known that the next phase of the project is permitted and ready to be built. Thomas O’Brien, managing partner of HYM Investment Group, said after the $15 million in infrastructure improvements, "The site is ready to go."
While there are three types of uses that could work well for the NorthPoint campus, situated between the Lechmere and Sullivan Square MBTA stations, "We could look seriously at residential now in 2011," O’Brien said.
Other NorthPoint options include commercial development with a focus on technology, as well as accommodating a large local company that wants to put all of its employees into one campus like a large financial services company. The other is life sciences laboratory space, given the site’s proximity to Kendall Square and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as Massachusetts General Hospital.
In Waltham, Park said he expects the first phase, which will require about a year of utility relocation and re-grading, to be complete in 2013. The second phase, about a million square feet of additional office, retail and other commercial space, will be constructed from 2013 to 2015.
"We have a lot of interest for both the office and the retail," Park said. "We don’t think there’s any problem with the smaller shops that are being built, but we are discussing possibilities with anchor tenants," who he would not name.
The NorthPoint project will create a new Green Line T stop at the development’s doorstep, providing a connection to the MBTA’s extension of that rail line. Two condominium buildings have already been built and are in the process of being sold.
"This isn’t an academic planning exercise," O’Brien said of the project. "This is permitted and ready to go."
He would not provide a timeline for construction or when a decision would be made about the type of uses that will be included at NorthPoint.
