🔒Editorial: Worcester must play a better hand at the bargaining table

For decades, the city of Worcester struggled to attract investment. With housing prices historically low (or, more nicely put, affordable) attracting builders to increase that stock has always been a challenge. When new construction costs don’t cover what they can get for rent, it’s not easy to entice developers to invest in commercial space either. Worcester has been a tough town to be a developer, and the city had little leverage in attracting new investment, so it developed a business-friendly toolkit of tax breaks, zoning leniency, and limited design review, all of which helped get deals done, but gave plenty of chips at the bargaining table to developers.

Now, that power has shifted. Worcester is in a position of strength. The city has a better hand to play at the table, and it is important the city plays it well.

Historically, while the city officials could not change real estate values or rents, they could at least make it easier to do business here. Streamlining the approval process, better coordinating departments working on developments, and bending over backward to be accommodative were all important factors in getting investors to take another look. On the financial side, larger projects were given tax incentives, especially for those expanding operations and hiring additional staff. Add to that a big investment from the city and state governments to help clear key parcels, build out infrastructure, and work hand in hand, all willed new projects into being.

The city, along with key private partners, played an important role in spurring the development activity we see today. Worcester is clearly a place where people want to be: the population rose by over the past decade by 8% to a modern record of 206,518 according to the 2020 U.S. Census; the arts and culture scene is gaining new attention; and developers are falling over themselves to build new stock and rehabilitate old facilities. With momentum now clearly on its side, Worcester’s got a much stronger hand at the table.

However, several projects now underway or in the final throes of their approval process feel out of scale with their surroundings and not in step with the city’s urban design priorities, especially in how the projects interact with the street. The Alta Seven Hills apartment complex at the former Our Lady of Mount Carmel church site just off I-290 plans a large parking garage facing Shrewsbury Street, a critical pedestrian artery connecting downtown to Worcester’s historic restaurant row. The 371-unit, $106-million market rate development is up for a $10-million tax break. Before being granted such a generous gift from the city, the developer – Wood Partners of Atlanta – needs to dramatically soften that edge of its project with retail or other interactive elements along that key artery in order to encourage the critical pedestrian link with Washington Square. Much like the city did when Galaxy Development of Webster was planning the Trolley Yard retail center off Grove Street, officials need to strongly advocate for a more pedestrian-friendly design from Wood Partners as conditional to the $10 million tax break.

The new mixed-use development planned for the Sir Morgan’s Cove site on Green Street is an exciting blend of retail, including a bowling alley and restaurant, to go along with 318 apartments. The design is attractive, but it’s on the drawing board as a 13-story giant in a neighborhood where surrounding buildings don’t exceed four stories. This zoning shift, which was approved in May, should never have been allowed to happen. Was the project only truly financially feasible towering above everything else in the neighborhood?

With rent prices spiking throughout the city, there has been a justifiable outcry for more affordable housing, but the former Table Talk manufacturing site in the heart of Kelly Square – one of the hottest development parcels in town – really the best spot for a project with potentially 400 affordable units? The plans from developer Boston Capital right now only designates the first 83-unit phase as affordable, with the rest still an open question. In one of the city’s most heavily trafficked pedestrian areas, Boston Capital’s plans offer minimal street level interactivity, which ought to be required for the first floor of a project in the middle of all the action and just a 9 iron from the Polar Park baseball stadium. It is more prudent to have a mix of affordable and market rate units in every major development instead of a single massive project that could well end up being developed as 100% affordable unless the city and Boston Capital can agree on a healthy mix.

Worcester’s new construction activity has brought palpable excitement to the city. Yet how these new projects fit into their locations, how they interact with the street, and their neighborhood, is critical for their long-term success. They need to add to the neighborhood’s vitality, not deaden the public realm. The city has new leverage with developers it did not have in the past, and needs to use it to push harder to achieve its urban design priorities. Worcester must create a design review board to offer feedback to developers at the early planning stages when input can be valuable, and not at the tail end of the process. Even if the board started in an advisory capacity, it would be a real positive.

The use of big tax breaks ought to be rethought, too, only using that carrot as leverage to gain meaningful concessions. The city’s split real estate tax rate is already a burden for commercial owners, and it’s the existing property owners who absorb the tax breaks that mostly large, well-heeled, and out-of-town developers are being rewarded.

Worcester is playing from a new deck of cards, and upping its game with stronger advocacy for urban design principles will help assure that today’s momentum will continue well into the future.