Jamie Fox
Title: Broker, Kinlin Grover
Age: 59
Experience: 35 years
Jim Fox is one of Falmouth’s go-to guys for development issues in town. As a member of the planning board, he has been closely involved in writing zoning bylaws for wind turbines currently spinning above one part of town and helping prepare for the many more that could be built just offshore. Before moving to Falmouth full time and building some small condo projects, he worked in commercial real estate for companies like Cushman & Wakefield and CB Richard Ellis in Boston. But his heart pulled him back to the Cape, where he lives and works as a broker for both commercial and residential properties for Kinlin Grover.
Q: Falmouth Harbor has been chosen as the home port for operations of the Cape Wind project. What does that mean for the town? Is Falmouth ready for it?
A: If Cape Wind gets its approvals, a lot of new businesses will likely be coming to Falmouth, because Falmouth Harbor was chosen as the home port for its maintenance and operations headquarters. We’re ideally situated for any spinoff businesses that come our way. Downtown Falmouth has had a great revival in the past 10 years. The utilities have been put under the street; the telephone poles are gone. It’s really become a destination. We have a thriving Main Street business district. We have many new restaurants, and the retail businesses have really grown. The town is very open to that kind of economic growth.
Q: What are the other development issues the town is facing?
A: One of the things Falmouth is very challenged with is not having enough industrial space. We are in the process of creating a new light industrial district … for smaller businesses in town. We’re looking at taking some of the parcels off Thomas Landers Road by Technology Park and expanding that area to have it grow even more commercially. Currently, if a contractor has a bunch of trucks and an asphalt business, he’s not allowed to park those trucks at his home and there are really no places in town for it. A lot of those business owners have to go rent warehouse space in Bourne or farther away because Falmouth doesn’t have the space. We’ve been pushing our businesspeople away, so we’re trying to create more property that’s commercially zoned for light warehouse and manufacturing activities. No one wants Falmouth to become this big industrial town. But slow, moderate growth is a good thing. If you don’t grow a little bit, you die.
Q: Can you talk about the commercial brokerage that you have? What are typical types of properties you deal with?
A: I don’t just do Falmouth on the commercial side, and most of my commercial work in the past year has been in Bourne. There are some challenges in Bourne, especially the Buzzards Bay area that is kind of rundown, so Bourne has set up a growth incentive zone to encourage redevelopment of that area. Most of the deals I’ve done in the past year have been difficult to get financing for because the economy is still not great and the banks aren’t lending. But for buyers that have all cash and don’t have bank financing already, I have structured three deals this past year where we had the owner take back a 10-year note on the property and the buyer pays back the mortgage directly to the owner. It solves the need for financing. One was a small grocery store close to the Bourne Bridge. Another was an old gas station that had some pollution issues in the past, and the bank said no way they would finance it.
Five Favorite Cape And Islands Spots:
- Early morning summer swimming at Surf Drive beach, just across Vineyard Sound from Martha’s Vineyard.
- The newly extended Shining Sea bike path, “a national park-quality bike ride,” fromorth Falmouth to Woods Hole.
- Fishing off the southern coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
- Quissett Harbor in Woods Hole.
- Fishing on Washburn Island and the whole stretch of shoreline from East Falmouth to Mashpee.
