A rendering of Washington Place, the 5-story, mixed-use development that has broken ground in Newtonville on the old Orr block, formerly home to the Boston Ballet School. Courtesy of Mark Development.
How can a city with so many smart people be so stupid when it comes to development?
That’s my question for Newton as the city’s NIMBY elements gear up to do battle with the latest developer looking to bring badly needed housing to the Garden City, where the median home price tops a modest $1 million.
He may not exactly be a big name in development, but you’ve got to hand it to him – Robert Korff is certainly ambitious. The long-time Newton resident has been snapping up land and buildings along Newton’s Washington Street corridor, with plans for hundreds of new apartments, the Globe notes in a recent and mostly positive feature on his ambitions. And there are likely hundreds more on tap as Korff takes over stalled plans to transform the large surface parking lot at the Riverside MBTA station.
At 1.5 million square feet, Korff is going big with Riverside after the previous developer, facing the usual carping about traffic, scaled back to the point where it was no longer feasible.
But the knives are already coming out for Korff. “It’s too much power in the hands of one private interest,” one city councilor told the Globe, fearful that Korff will be granted too many zoning concessions.
More than a few comments online were unsparing.
“Rename Newton ‘Korffworld’ and acknowledge having sold out,” “Cassandra” fumed.
Scott Van Voorhis
That’s a lot of power for a developer whose biggest deals to date have been retail plazas anchored by Walgreens and a resume that, in and of itself, won’t get you on the front page of even the local business paper.
Korff won approval for Washington Place, a 140-unit mixed-use apartment complex which has faced fierce opposition; demolition has begun on the site.
Once again, Newton progressives – and for that matter other, less enlightened NIMBYies – are barking up the wrong tree.
In their own blinkered way, they have bought into spin of his high-priced public relations helpers that Korff is the next Steve Karp-like property mogul, ready to make his mark in Newton and accept delegations of local officials on bended knee.
This line of criticism puts the cart before the horse. After a long and bitter fight, Korff is finally moving ahead with Washington Place, his first major Newton project.
But all his other ideas are just that – Korff could be faced with years spend years-long slot of lining up all the city and state permits in order to be able to build anything, and there’s no guarantee of success.
Not sure what your idea of power is, but Korff for some time to come will be a supplicant seeking the city’s approval, and will hardly, if ever, be in the position to give marching orders to anyone at Newton City Hall.
Where’s the Money?
However, this all leaves the bigger and far more important question unasked: Does Korff have the financial partners to pull off all these proposals?
It’s a basic question that should be asked of any developer, with financing often the most challenging part of any real estate project. But too often it’s a question that goes unasked amid the typical ranting about traffic and the prospect that renters will bring along children who will, horrors of horrors, enroll in the local school system.
Sure, Korff’s been generating cash by selling some of those drug-store anchored retail plazas, but developing major projects is an expensive proposition. He’ll need hundreds of millions to convert all these ideas into the concrete and steel of reality – far more than what he’ll get selling his strip malls.
Furthermore, Korff isn’t just interested in putting up new buildings, but rather creating an entirely new neighborhood in the mold of Mass Ave. in Cambridge, with parks, cafés and bike paths.
That’s some big talk.
When I caught up with him last week, Korff told me he is “well capitalized” but declined to go into any further detail. He is self-funding his property acquisitions but plans to line up financing when projects go “vertical,” which, he reminded me, is standard procedure in development projects.
“That is not something we are really interested in sharing publicly,” said Korff, adding that he found my questions about financing odd and “out of context.” I begged to differ.
Newton progressives are so busy spouting nonsense about greedy developers supposedly gorging at the public till that they don’t have time for such pesky questions, either. Instead of worrying about what Korff says he plans to build – as if we’ll all wake up tomorrow and presto, Washington Street will be lined with mid-rises – I’d be more worried about happens if his plans fail to gel.
If that financial backing proves elusive, Korff could wind up sitting on a bunch of idle development sites and buildings, hardly what the already congested and less than pristine Washington Street corridor needs.
But if Korff manages to pull off his plans, it’s hard to understand how they wouldn’t be a boon to Newton, from a badly needed upgrade for the Washington Street corridor to a well-positioned apartment and mixed-used development at Riverside.
Korff said the apartments he wants to build will provide badly needed housing for older residents looking to downsize and younger Millennials looking to get a foothold in the community. There is a shortage of rental buildings with elevators in Newton, a major issue for older downsizers.
“Housing values have skyrocketed here,” Korff said. “People are leaving the community because there isn’t any housing to downsize into.”
Newton, and the whole Boston area for that matter, needs far more new housing than is being built, and it’s been that way not just for years, but for a couple of decades.
It’s mystifying why sprawl-hating progressives, with their love of transit-orientated development, wouldn’t jump on Korff’s bandwagon. If the busy Washington Street corridor, with the Turnpike a hop and a skip away, isn’t a great place for housing, what is? For that matter, Riverside presents an even more compelling argument.
Here are the facts, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman: Newton’s median home price year to date is $1.25 million, up from an already lofty $792,500 at this time five years ago. The median condominium price is $670,000, up from $417,500 in 2013. The average rent is $2,750.
Most middle class families can’t afford these prices, let alone the working class.
Where’s the outrage over that?
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
