Worcester Infill and Developments

2nd thing. I would say it's the #4 New England city at absolute best, well behind Providence and Hartford. It's like Charlotte being a "bigger" city than Boston, only in the sense that it's 300 square miles!

Absolutely on point. Worcester likes to say that it's the second biggest city because it happens to have the largest population in the city limits but the metro areas for both Providence and Hartford are several hundreds of thousands of people more and denser, and it's very apparent when you're in Providence.
 
Providence is a great city that has the unfortunate problem of being stuck in RI. If the RI state government could ever unfuck itself it would be a great small city and probably rival Boston for a lot of attention. It absolutely deserves the #2 NE city spot.

Hartford is pretty meh... I haven't been in awhile, but I don't remember it being much. Worcester's problem is that it doesn't have much of a local economy anymore... manufacturing is not coming back to the New England because it's too expensive not in terms of just labor but also shipping from Worcester via rail is only useful for Northeast markets.

Worcester needs to figure out how to tie itself to Boston better. Better trains and better urban planning in the core downtown areas would go a long way. Alternatively the state needs to start heavily incentivizing businesses to locate in places like Worcester and Lowell, at least, for their tier-2 operational and administrative stuff.
 
0993CF88-01C5-462A-BCF1-8E41279FADE6.jpeg

source: me last year

Restoration of the Central Building on 332 Main Street has completed after about a year. There are 55 affordable and market rate units, 40 of which have been leased.

1 bedrooms start at $1193, 2 beds are $2200. I’m assuming those are market rate.


 
What's the parking situation like? Can you get a residential permit for the Worcester Center garage?
 
UMass Medical school and the VA are building a new “state of the art” 53,000 sqf VA outpatient clinic on the UMass campus. The inauguration will be 2021.



8F2EEA84-E8B6-4DF9-A82E-6657668E41BC.jpeg


E17735DA-A74F-434F-BA69-EFE910A3322A.jpeg

Source: UMass Medical Twitter Feed
 
Cleaning it and putting in larger windows would help. It looks like 20 stories of portholes.
 
Smart purchase at that price, the property is massively undervalued. That's basically 130K per unit...
 
WPI is breaking ground on a $80 million “Smart World” research collaboration building.

6F013BB3-0C3E-4102-82B6-1B97D91E2379.jpeg


3EC7A8A2-EAA6-41E9-AE33-EBAE13B5CD52.jpeg

WPI twitter feed

 
Welp, there goes the stair set that makes it easy for kids in Founders to get to 8AM class.
 
“Worcester Plaza tower sold for $16.5m to Boston investment firm”

“WORCESTER – Worcester Plaza, the 24-story glass tower that is one of the most visible elements of the city’s skyline, has been sold to a Boston investment firm for $16.5 million.”

446main27a.jpg


Link
 
The previous owner sold the property at a steep loss:

“According to registry documents, S-BANK Worcester Main bought the property for $21.46 million in 2000. The city assessed the property at $25.1 million in 2019.”
 
View attachment 258
source: me last year

Restoration of the Central Building on 332 Main Street has completed after about a year. There are 55 affordable and market rate units, 40 of which have been leased.

1 bedrooms start at $1193, 2 beds are $2200. I’m assuming those are market rate.



Less than a month after opening, the Central Building at 332 Main is already 100% occupied, and a local produce grocer is opening on the ground floor. The 2000 square feet market will provide produce, groceries, meat, dairy, beer and wine.

 
I called them a week ago. There are only 5 market rate units and all were taken in June. Guy on the phone sounded like he wished he could have put more market rate units out there.
 
Worcester is making great strides to make downtown Main St aesthetically pleasing, and they are, but it is a pedestrian wasteland and it probably will always be that way. There are no attractions on Main St with the exception of Hanover theater, which in itself, is an architectural gem. There is a complete void of shopping. There are no restaurants until you venture down Front St or Franklin St. The City Square Development, which is off Main St has improved the area, but that's a block or two away. Main St will never be a destination, it's an avenue to get elsewhere. Now, the transformation of the canal district is a new and very bright chapter for Worcester, reserved in a different thread.
 

Back
Top