After an ambitious downtown redevelopment scheme fell apart in late winter, Quincy is ready to hit the reset button.
The city is narrowing down a list of land-use consultants who will be responsible for rethinking the seven-year-old master plan for 3.5-million-square feet of offices, residences and retail on 55 acres in the heart of downtown.
“Right now, it deserves a whole new look, and it’s a little stale,” said Dennis Harrington, the city’s planning director. “The market changes and our response to the market changes.”
An advisory committee has identified Redgate Real Estate Advisors of Boston and Stantec, an Edmonton-based consulting with local offices in Boston, as finalists. Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch will make the final decision awarding the contract.
A Complicated History
The consultants will study whether the master plan adapted in 2007 is still realistic, given its scope of 1,400 housing units and 1.8 million square feet of commercial space, or to suggest changes.
They’ll also recommend which parcels should be made available for development and in which order. Near the top of the list, according to Quincy officials, is the city-owned Ross parking garage, which sits on a 3-acre site across from Stop & Shop Supermarket Cos.’ regional offices. That parcel was identified as the potential site for a big-box retailer in redevelopment studies.
Work on the first phase of the redevelopment ended almost as soon as it began last year, resulting in Koch’s removal of master developer Street-Works of White Plains, N.Y. in March.
Street-Works blamed rising construction costs for the stoppage of work on the Merchants Row phase of development last fall, leaving a moribund construction site on part of a key development parcel. The property would have jump-started the downtown makeover with 287 loft apartments, 35,000 of ground-floor retail shops and 24,000 square feet of office space.
With a new plan comes a potential new set of investors. Quincy Mutual Insurance Co. has invested more than $18 million in the Merchants Row parcel, and it has hired Sheskey Architects of Quincy to draw up a new development plan for the block, Koch spokesman Christopher Walker said. Kevin Meskell, an executive vice president at Quincy Mutual, said the company remains an investor in the project but “there is nothing definite at this time” as far as a new plan for Merchants Row.
Quincy Mutual originally partnered with The Beal Cos. of Boston on the first phase, but Beal backed out following a merger last year with The Related Cos. of New York. Twining Properties of New York City took Beal’s place, but it’s unclear whether Twining is still involved. Bob Flack, Boston partner for Twining Properties, did not respond to messages seeking to clarify the company’s current role.
The third investor, LaSalle Investment Management of Chicago, had announced a commitment of $55 million to the Merchants Row project. A spokeswoman for LaSalle, which is a subsidiary of JLL, did not respond to an inquiry, but JLL appears to have continued interest in the project. JLL was hired by Street-Works to market the 1.1-million-square-foot office and medical space component in 2012, and it was one of the companies that responded to the request for qualifications for a land-use consultant, although it was not selected as a finalist.
How Far Will They Go?
While Quincy looks to restart its urban revitalization project, mixed-use projects continue to move forward in other inner-ring Boston suburbs.
In downtown Waltham, Newton-based Northland Investment Corp. broke ground in June on The Merc at Moody & Main, which will include 269 apartments and 27,600 square feet of retail space. In Watertown, Boston-based Boylston Properties is partnering with the Wilder Cos. and Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush on a redevelopment of the Arsenal Mall, and Athenahealth is proposing an expansion of its neighboring office complex to attract tech start-ups.
Quincy had sought to attract a mix of traditional offices and medical uses for the 1.1-million-square-foot office component of the redevelopment. In conjunction with the Massachusetts Life Science Center, the city is participating in a new marketing campaign promoting cities along the MBTA’s Red Line as a unified life science corridor, seeking to leverage connections to the industry’s traditional Cambridge hub.
Despite the recent setbacks, Quincy retains several advantages over other Boston suburbs, including superior mass transit access and relative affordability of office space and housing, said Jonathan Davis, CEO of the Boston-based developer Davis Cos.
“The access to the (academic and research) institutions is not great, and it’s a question of how far the knowledge employees are willing to go,” Davis said.
Email: sadams@thewarrengroup.com
