Transit-oriented development has been derailed in Framingham.
Planners, architects and developers tout transit-oriented development – sustainable city and town growth centered on transportation nodes – as the wave of the future and a sure-fire way to breathe new life into struggling communities with good public transportation infrastructure. Transit-oriented development is sprawl-busting, dense in-fill construction and adaptive reuse, making it the darling of the real estate community.
Framingham could be a model for that type of so-called smart growth, observers say. But despite commuter rail service to Boston, the downtown remains blighted and condominiums go unsold.
For years the MetroWest community has been poised to create a vibrant, mixed-use downtown that would take advantage of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority’s Worcester Line commuter rail station, which offers a 40-minute train ride to Boston’s South Station. Despite several proposals that promised to revitalize the gritty area, how-ever, it remains a collection of parking lots, used car dealerships, social service agencies and vacant storefronts.
“Downtown is in transition,” said Susan Bernstein, a longtime member of the Framingham Planning Board. “It will take another decade to see real change.”
Two condominium projects, once touted as the keys to transform downtown, have struggled. None of the condos at 1 Kendall St., a 23-unit development in a 4-story building, have sold. A one-bedroom unit has been on the market since January 2007, and its asking price has dropped 17 percent to $149,000 during that time. A few minutes away on Bishop Street, only six of 87 units at The Residences at Dennison Triangle have sold, forcing the developer to rent the remaining one- and two-bedroom dwellings.
David Depietri, a principal at Rosewood Management and the Dennison owner, insists that the 750,000-square-foot former mill building project is a success. He said his Marlborough-based company is renting the units for between $1,100 for a small one-bedroom unit and $2,000 for a two-bedroom loft-style apartment.
“I never thought our loft project alone would be the mechanism to change the downtown,” he said. “But we felt that if we were successful it would prove to other developers they could do this too.”
While Depietri acknowledged that a number of ideas to breathe life into the downtown have been in the works for years, he said a major redevelopment of a downtown re-quires the support of town officials and voters.
“If any community wants to make a drastic change in an area, they must be 100 percent focused on what they’re doing and how they will do it,” he said. “You have to take small steps to rebuild a city. The downtown is enormous; you’re talking about 16 blocks of commercial space.”
Michael Perry, manager of Framingham Acquisition, the Wellesley-based company that bought the CVS Pharmacy block on Concord Street in 1997, recently received ap-proval for a 290-unit building with 50,000 square feet of commercial space at the site. But the project stalled because he could not secure financing. In the last few months, he hired a commercial broker to sell the property without success.
“I’m not sure what we will do,” he said. “We may downsize the project or sell it or some combination.”
Still, Perry is bullish on downtown Framingham.
“I won’t say downtown is great,” he said. “But there are lots of things in the works. The Fabric Place is selling their land; the Salvation Army is for sale. The whole thing is starting to move. People want things to happen yesterday, but it will take time.”
Thomas Langdon, development director at The Salvation Army, said the Framingham facility is not for sale. “We have had conversations with the town of possibly moving our operations from Framingham, but the building is not for sale in the traditional sense.”
