Riverside Development | 333 Grove Street | Newton

The key details:
Korff’s changes would keep the same overall project size and number of buildings, but would cut the number of rental apartments from 582 to 550 units.

The approved version of the project included 44 units for households earning 50 percent of the area median income in Newton — about $113,000 for a family of four. Another 43 units would have been set aside for households earning 80 percent of that figure.

The number of lower-cost units will be reduced, according to the proposal. More than 60 percent of the project would remain devoted to residential use.

Overall, residential space would shrink from about 654,000 square feet to under 633,000 square feet.

Korff also would replace the planned hotel with a taller life sciences building — increasing the height from 70 feet to 124 feet. The number of parking spaces also would grow, from 2,032 to 2,267 spaces.

Another building, a planned office tower, would be reduced in height, from 169 feet to 143 feet tall.

Public open space at the development also would be reduced from about 1.5 acres to about 1.2 acres.
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A life sciences building? That far out of the city?
 
jklo said:
A life sciences building? That far out of the city?
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Jklo -- do a bit more homework or take a drive on Rt-128 between about I-90 and I-93
There have been life science buildings in Lexington and Waltham for well over a decade
I'm just surprised that it took the developer this long to decide to join the "party like its 1929" with respect to building for the Life Sciences
 
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reduce the amount of space devoted to residential apartments and retail use
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I get that they're trying to jump on the lab bandwagon. Disappointing from a project scope perspective. Hotels are great for local restaurants, and keep the neighborhood active.

The construction on the hotel wouldn't even finish until 3 years from now. Surprised they are already changing plans...

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Vagabond said:
reduce the amount of space devoted to residential apartments and retail use
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I get that they're trying to jump on the lab bandwagon. Disappointing from a project scope perspective. Hotels are great for local restaurants, and keep the neighborhood active.

The construction on the hotel wouldn't even finish until 3 years from now. Surprised they are already changing plans...
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Vagabond -- last year was so bad for hotels in general and for Boston Hotels in particular [worst performance of all of the cities with a large number of hotel rooms] -- that in a marginal place like Riverside -- I'm sure that financing for a hotel is probably very hard
On the other hand -- everyone and his cousin is thinking this is the next just outside of KSq bio/pharma lab center [over flow space is the term]

its beginning to resemble the 2000 pre-crash when everyone thought that every old industrial property would be the site of a Telecom Switch or a hosting center for DotComs
I was in the middle of it -- one of the tasks which I performed for a well-financed DotCom / Telecom start-up in Cambridge [but outside of the immediate KSq] was to investigate available space for an expansion [2nd in 12 months -- with a doubling of the headcount to over 100]
I talked to a number of space brokers and they in turn passed our RFI along to a number of developers and owners of real estate
As a result there was a huge amount of speculation in properties and some amount of building of things which were very marginal -- and then the crash hit that kind of real estate

PS: the company folded 6 months after the search for more space started
 
RandomWalk said:
So the developer is trying for an office park with a transit station, rather than a neighborhood.
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Randomwalk -- it is after all Newton on Rt-128 -- there have been industrial / office and now lab parks there for 60 plus years and for 60 years the site was mostly just a giant parking lot for the T
Better a well organized modern "lab park" than just the usual hodgepodge of buildings from various Rt-128 eras

Note -- the Boston City Council is going to hold hearings on Labs in the neighborhoods -0- it seems that some of the -- let's say ill-informed constituents are now upset that instead of offices there are going to be "dangerous" biolabs foisted upon them

from Universal Hub

Councilors want more neighborhood oversight of proposals for life-sciences labs in their midsts

By adamg on Wed, 02/10/2021 - 9:57pm
The City Council agreed today with a request from Councilor Ed Flynn to look at ways to give neighborhoods a say in the construction of life-sciences labs that might be doing research on potentially dangerous diseases right next to residential buildings.
www.universalhub.com

Councilors want more neighborhood oversight of proposals for life-sciences labs in their midsts

The City Council agreed today with a request from Councilor Ed Flynn to look at ways to give neighborhoods a say in the construction of life-sciences labs that might be doing research on potentially dangerous diseases right next to residential buildings. Read more.
www.universalhub.com www.universalhub.com
 
RandomWalk said:
So the developer is trying for an office park with a transit station, rather than a neighborhood.
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Not really, they just don't want to build a hotel since they see the long term prospects for business travel to suburban office parks (the only thing that sustains a hotel there) as being significantly worse than they were a year ago. Folks may go back to the office post-COVID, but a lot of things that used to be travel will probably be virtual now that everyone's used to it.

The problem is that the hotel, retail, and open space were the parts of this that were useful to the neighbors. Korff is cutting all of them and replacing them with things that bring in more revenue to him and to the City. He's also surely been aware that this would be necessary through most of the past year, raising the (reasonable) question of why he waited until he had the approval then immediately asked to change the terms. He'll definitely get it, since it's more tax money, but it's sleazy. FWIW, this has been building for two months at City meetings - it just didn't hit the Globe until today. Korff's been asking for backsies since before the ink was dry, almost.

I don't think the business hotel would have made it feel any more like an office park or like a neighborhood, honestly.
 
This all sounds to me like they either have or are talking to someone that want lab space there so they are pushing around the edges to give more of that kind of space and less of other.
 
found5dollar said:
This all sounds to me like they either have or are talking to someone that want lab space there so they are pushing around the edges to give more of that kind of space and less of other.
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No, it sounds like they can't fill a hotel and they're on the same "surely THIS bubble will never burst" life science addiction as every other developer in Greater Boston.

And to be clear, it's not really the developers who are in on the bubble - it's the financers. Note the 401 Congress case - they lost their financing as long as it was office, but found someone as soon as it was lab. Developers can't build what they can't finance.
 
whighlander said:
Jklo -- do a bit more homework or take a drive on Rt-128 between about I-90 and I-93
There have been life science buildings in Lexington and Waltham for well over a decade
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By Life Sciences I am assuming they are talking about real lab space, and not office space marketed towards sciency companies.
 
jklo said:
By Life Sciences I am assuming they are talking about real lab space, and not office space marketed towards sciency companies.
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There are real lab and manufacturing spaces in that stretch. Shire (now a subsidy of Takeda) might be the best example as far as I know.
 
Equilibria said:
And to be clear, it's not really the developers who are in on the bubble - it's the financers. Note the 401 Congress case - they lost their financing as long as it was office, but found someone as soon as it was lab. Developers can't build what they can't finance.
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I thought about this some more and I think you are 100% correct. My preference would be that they focus on housing and retail but I could see financiers running for the hills. To get them back they are going after the life sciences hype train. Project might be dead if Newton doesn't approve the changes.

These are not going to be cheap apartments & I could see them worrying about being able to fill it at the rates they were hoping for in a post-covid world.

RandomWalk said:
So the developer is trying for an office park with a transit station
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That won't be used because it's so far out. 40 minutes to Park, etc , etc. Just based upon my time at Riverside Center, it's a nice checkbox that other 128 office parks can't match but in practice people drive there.
 
Blackbird said:
There are real lab and manufacturing spaces in that stretch. Shire (now a subsidy of Takeda) might be the best example as far as I know.
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Blackbird -- Shire is completely gone -- it merged into Takeda and they now have a huge operation in Lexington on the corner of Rt-2 and Rt-128 [the old Raytheon HQ site for the old timers amongst us] with land available for further growth

very unlikely that Takeda they will expand to Riverside

However -- if I was an outfit with a big footprint down in Cambridge or Boston and especially with a lot of high-end folks commuting from the Wellesley, Weston, Newton, Needham area -- I'd seriously think of an outpost @ Riverside
 
jklo said:
By Life Sciences I am assuming they are talking about real lab space, and not office space marketed towards sciency companies.
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Jklo -- actually these days a lot of bio is soft-lab mostly something which could be done in a software development place

just look at what Moderna did with their transformation into one of the premier vaccine development companies -- its all done by automating the design of the RNA for the vaccine
This transformation akin to the development of CAD for semiconductors which revolutionized microelectronics in the circa 1980 timeframe [aka Moore's Law] -- will likely do the same for bio/pharma -- there will be a lot more product with a whole lot less of the hit or miss glassware-centric approach
 
whighlander said:
Blackbird -- Shire is completely gone -- it merged into Takeda and they now have a huge operation in Lexington on the corner of Rt-2 and Rt-128 [the old Raytheon HQ site for the old timers amongst us] with land available for further growth

very unlikely that Takeda they will expand to Riverside
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I wasn't suggesting Takeda was going to move. I was giving an example of how the industry has a presence around 128.
 
Blackbird said:
I wasn't suggesting Takeda was going to move. I was giving an example of how the industry has a presence around 128.
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Blackbird
Bio / Pharma has displaced generic tech in the sector of Rt-128 from from Lexington through Waltham
there are a few smaller outposts in other sectors -- but not much has moved in near to the Pike or further south
When the Hobbs Brook spec lab/office complex is completed [500k sq ft spec project] there will be well over 1 million sq ft in the "lab / office" category just in the Lex - Waltham sector of Rt-128
indeed, about the only prominent non Bio/Pharmas in that sector of Rt-128 are:
Boston Dynamics,
Cimpress [aka Vistaprint],
Verizon LTE Innovation Center & Innovation Auditorium,
National Grid,
Constant Contact,
and Dassault Systèmes
 
Turns out there was a bit more to Korff's proposed changes than pandemic rethinking (and look at him doing the ole' "these proposed changes are the only way to keep the project viable" bait-and-switch):

www.bostonglobe.com

Proposed lab conversion of Liberty Mutual offices in Weston underscores growth of life sciences in the suburbs - The Boston Globe

Greatland Realty Partners is advancing plans for lab buildings in Weston that could help cement a new life sciences cluster in that area.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

I get that it's theortically much more lucrative for Newton, but at some point the music will stop...
 
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