Hotel, apartment development surrounding Polar Park shrinks and is delayed 2 years
By Grant Welker
The planned $125-million mixed-use development surrounding the Polar Park baseball stadium in the Canal District will be smaller than anticipated and be realized about two years later than initially scheduled, according to a report to the Worcester City Council from City Manager Edward Augustus released on Friday.
This hotel-apartment-office-retail development from Boston-based Madison Properties has been planned as key to the city paying for the 30-year financing on the $132-million public baseball stadium for the minor league Worcester Red Sox without having to tap the city's pre-existing tax revenue streams. According to Augustus' report, the stadium development will still pay for itself through the tax collections on the specially created district surrounding the ballpark, as the city has restructured its debt repayment schedule and will realize revenues from other developments on the site.
The report on Madison's development on Friday detailed the changes to the five aspects of the property, showing some have been reduced in size, and whose completion has been delayed until September 2022 or later, with the last aspect completed in December 2024:
- The planned hotel development is dropping from $40 million to $11.7 million. Instead of being 262 hotel rooms split among two hotel brands is now a single hotel with 125 rooms. The project is now expected to be complete by May 2024, about two years later than last expected.
- A planned $15.6-million office building slated to be complete at the same time as the ballpark — next April — will now be pushed back to 2023. The value of this development has increased from a projected $12.8 million in January.
- A first residential building previously planned to open in September 2021 will now be ready a year later on September 2022. In January, Augustus said this building would have 225 units along with retail on the first floor. His report on Friday didn't provide an updated on the size or value of that building.
- A second 125-unit residential building initially planned to open in December 2022 will now be ready in December 2023. This building is now valued at $11.3 million. In January, Augustus pegged the value of the two residential buildings combined at $44.5 million.
- A $10.8-million laboratory building planned for December 2023 will now open a year later in December 2024. The value of this building has been reduced from $17.8 million.
The report did not total the anticipated value of these construction projects. When originally announced in 2018, Madison was due to invest $140 million into the properties. In January, Augustus reported private development on the ballpark site had been reduced to $125 million. The value of four projects detailed in the report on Friday now totals $49.3 million, which doesn't include the first residential building whose value wasn't mentioned.
Many of the markets slated to make up the Madison development -- hotel, office space and retail -- have been adversely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
As the Worcester Business Journal
reported Monday, the parking garage being built by the city and leased to Madison properties development's parking garage will also be delayed. The garage, which is relied upon in large part to provide parking for fans for Worcester Red Sox games, will now be ready by next fall instead of the spring.
The number of planned parking spaces in the garage has been reduced from 525 to 340. Because of the lower number of spaces, the amount in lease payments Madison is paying for the garage has dropped from $275,000 annually to $178,000. Those amounts are fixed for five years; in the following years, the lease payment is dropping from $300,000 annually to $194,000.
