A New York developer planning to turn a longtime office building in downtown Worcester into apartments has bought the site and three others for $14.4 million.
The SilverBrick Group has told city officials it wants to convert the Commerce Building at 340 Main St. into 312 apartments as part of a $54-million project. The developer is seeking $3.4 million in city tax breaks and $4 million in state investment tax credits.
The project would bring the nine-story, 324,000-square-foot Commerce Building into more productive use than today, when its office space is largely empty. By the end of the year, the building will be 60% vacant, with a number of anchor tenant leases expiring, Peter Dunn, the city’s chief development officer, said in September when the project was announced.
The SilverBrick Group bought the site from the Krock family of Worcester, which also owns a series of other downtown buildings, including a 55-unit apartment building opened in 2019 at 332 Main St., and 18 Chestnut, a long-empty office building it plans to bring to new use soon.
The sale, which closed Nov. 17, also included a 10-story, 167,000-square-foot office building at 390 Main St., known as the Slater Building, and nearby parking lots at 7 Cedar St. and 23 Chestnut St.
The new apartments at the Commerce Building are slated to be market rate, with proposed rents ranging from $1,250 for a studio to $1,900 for a three-bedroom. The first 204 units are planned to open in a first phase by the end of 2022 and the last 108 units a year later.
