A proposal to convert the former Neiman Marcus space at the Natick Mall into lab and office space appeared to have beaten stiff opposition from residents of a nearby condo tower. iStock illustration

When it comes to real estate projects, no news is not good news. Rather, it’s an almost universal sign of bad news. 

Developers are some of the most self-promotional people on the planet. So, when they start dodging questions and won’t say anything about a project they were previously hailing as the greatest thing ever, you know that something is amiss, whether it’s a financing deal gone bad, a backer pulling out, a market downturn or all of the above.   

So, by that measure, the radio silence surrounding a controversial proposal for a big lab complex at the Natick Mall is unlikely to be a harbinger of an imminent groundbreaking. 

Local developer Bulfinch Cos. made a splash in late 2021 when the firm snapped up the Natick Mall’s flagship retail property, formerly host to Neiman Marcus, with plans to convert it into a cutting-edge science complex. 

However, the plans by Bulfinch and Harrison Street, a Chicago-based investment management firm, quickly ran into stiff opposition from residents of the Nouvelle, a luxury condominium tower built more than a decade ago next to once-ritzy, now defunct Neiman Marcus store. 

Both sides lawyered up and Nouvelle residents turned out in force at a series of public hearings that dragged into the late fall of last year. 

Natick, meanwhile, went ahead and passed new lab regulations that appeared to pave the way for the approval of Bulfinch’s proposed department store-to-lab conversion project. 

And then, nothing, nada, silence. The trail goes cold, with apparently no further hearings, and no further announcements from Bulfinch, with the firm’s PR person not responding to multiple emails on the status of the project. 

Two Big Challenges 

Is the project dead, alive, on life support? An executive at a top suburban brokerage firm believes that Bulfinch is still marketing the old Neiman store site as a potential lab project and is still forging ahead, even as other lab projects get put on hold or cancelled. 

Maybe, though it would be a little more believable actually coming from Bulfinch, and frankly, it’s telling that it’s not. 

Right now, the plan to turn what was once the centerpiece of the Natick Mall into research space faces two fairly daunting challenges. 

The first is winning over the neighbors, with residents of the Nouvelle having shell out upwards of $700,000 to $800,000 for their condo and their perch overlooking the Natick Mall. 

It’s a safe bet none of the Nouvelle owners ever envisioned that the Neiman Marcus would instead be turned into a lab building. 

But as daunting as the neighbors might be, an even bigger challenge is the state of the lab market, with the boom times long since gone amid a contraction in financing for new projects and the new startups needed to fill them. 

The amount of empty lab space in Greater Boston is expected to jump by nearly a quarter by the end of the year, according to commercial real estate firm Newmark. 

Scott Van Voorhis

Some of this is due to all the new lab projects that are still coming online, with construction having started back in the before times when the market was still strong. 

But there is also a heck of a lot of sublease space out there as well. 

Then there are all the would-be lab developers who have yet to break ground, but who are now starting to rethink whether it’s such a smart idea to start construction on new labs amid a growing backlog of empty research space. 

There are actually quite a few proposed lab projects – totaling nearly 2 million square feet – that are now in this kind of extended limbo, according to Newmark. 

Is Bulfinch’s Natick Mall lab proposal one of them? We’ll see but it certainly looks suspicious, now doesn’t it? 

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.