The recent recession wasn’t kind to Brockton, the “City of Champions” best known for native boxing stars Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler and its once-mighty industrial past.

During the recession, the city’s unemployment rate shot up above 11 percent, far higher than the state’s peak of 8.5 percent, while about 3,000 homes were foreclosed upon by lenders. To this day, hundreds of homes sit vacant in this city of 93,000, an ugly reminder that Brockton has yet to fully recover from the Great Recession.

Yet Brockton, one of Massachusetts’ economically challenged Gateway Cities, is nevertheless clawing its way back, with its jobless rate falling to 7.4 percent earlier this winter and foreclosure filings dramatically declining from a high of 648 in 2010 to about 130 last year.

And now it has a number of high-profile development projects under way downtown, providing more evidence that economic recovery is taking hold. The most visible is Boston-based Trinity Financial Inc.’s $100-million “Enterprise Center” redevelopment of the old Brockton Enterprise headquarters on Main Street. The first phase, most of which is approaching completion, includes 52,000 square feet of Class A office space, 10,000 square feet of retail, a 71-unit apartment complex called Centre 50, and a live-work artist community known as Enso Flats, with dozens of additional residential units and artist gallery space.

The state Department of Health and Human Services has already leased 29,000 square feet at the new Enterprise Center. Trinity Financial is now actively marketing the remaining office space. As for the new residential units, about 84 units have already been leased; rents at Centre 50 range from $1,200 a month for a one-bedroom unit to $1,600 for three-bedroom units.

The second phase of the project, which could start within a year, would include a new municipally owned parking garage and 102 additional apartments.

Trinity is betting that the widespread trend towards more urban transit-oriented developments across the state can be replicated in Brockton, which is linked to Boston and other communities via commuter rail.

“Brockton has a lot of history and a lot of potential,” said Matt Zahler, project manager for the Enterprise Center project in Brockton. Trinity is known for its urban projects in other Gateway Cities, and Zahler said his firm is convinced that Brockton’s Enterprise Center will be a huge “transformative” success.

“We’re definitely open to future (development) opportunities in Brockton,” Zahler said.

In addition to the Enterprise Center, a number of other projects have been recently completed or are set to break ground in coming months.

One of them includes the recently renovated Geo. Knight & Co. building at 124 Montello St. into a 30-unit “Station Lofts” complex in the downtown.

“That was a tipping point in bringing in other investors like Trinity,” Rob May, Brockton’s director of planning and economic development, said of the mixed-use Station Lofts.

College Moves/Seen As Catalyst
Another major project in the works is the planned renovation of the old Ganley Building, also located downtown, into a satellite campus for Massasoit Community College, Bridgewater State University and UMass Boston. State officials are putting the finishing touches on architectural designs and construction could begin by this fall.

If all goes well, classes at the Ganley site could start by the fall of 2017, attracting hundreds of daily students, teachers and administrators to the downtown. “It could lead to a lot of foot traffic that would help nearby shops,” May said.

On top of those downtown developments, the city has recently spruced up its City Hall plaza, renovated the public library on Main Street, and converted an old bank building into new city offices.

“In general, Brockton is doing very well right now,” said Mark Donahue, president of Donahue Associates, a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Brockton.
In the last 90 days, Donahue said two industrial buildings have been sold in Brockton and the American Cancer Society recently leased about 5,000 square feet of office space on Belmont Street, on the city’s west side.

The net result is that there is now little Class A office space left in the city to meet demand, even after Trinity’s Enterprise Center project is completed. Donahue thinks it’s only a matter of time before additional office space is built in Brockton.

“Everything that’s been built has already been filled,” said Donahue.

Like others, Trinity’s Matt Zahler partly credits Brockton’s improving fortunes to first-term Mayor Bill Carpenter’s “business-friendly” policies.

In an interview, Carpenter noted that Brockton still has a long way to go before it’s fully recovered from the recent recession. The city was the “epicenter of the foreclosure crisis” and there are still an estimated 300 to 400 vacant homes in Brockton, he said.

But his administration is determined to develop a long-term economic plan for the first time in years in Brockton, as well as streamline the city’s “archaic” zoning and permitting processes for developers, Carpenter said.

“There are a lot of investors sniffing around, wanting to get into Brockton and invest before prices start to really rise again,” said Carpenter. “I’m optimistic about the changes.”

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