Public documents hold so many secrets, it’s hard to tell all their stories.
This edition’s cover story is based on a public records request WBJ Managing Editor Eric Casey made of the Massachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance. After news broke last year of a Marlborough-based bid beating out more than a dozen others to develop the State Police’s coveted $200-million crime lab project, Casey was curious why DCAMM chose that one, especially after Worcester officials cried foul when one based in the city wasn’t selected.
Casey’s public records request became his “Marlborough’s $200M win”. This in-depth story is largely centered on the strengths of the Marlborough proposal and how the project and its 300 life sciences jobs will bolster the city, while touching on some of the flaws in the other proposals. Aside from this main narrative, the DCAMM document and Casey’s reporting tells many more stories.
From just studying the large chart in Casey’s story, you can see all the developers and large properties champing at the bit to land a project like this. Most of them center around existing buildings, and you can see the office vacancies created by EMC Corp.’s slow exit from the region is causing a problem. The former Westborough headquarters of BJ’s Wholesale Club was most recently approved for a 715,000-square-foot, four building life sciences development, but that property owner was now looking to the crime lab for the land instead. You can see the inherent challenges an urban area like Worcester faces compared to the more suburban Marlborough, as one of the Worcester-based bids struggled to identify enough affordable parking spaces for the crime lab’s workers. Moreover, Casey’s story shows the intense outside interest the Central Massachusetts economy is generating, as developers from Virginia, New York City, Boston, and Lexington all saw potential money to be made in the region.
Producing well-research stories based on public documents has been a hallmark of journalism and WBJ for a long time now, and there are many more to come. For now, check out Casey’s story and read the many stories the State Police crime lab bid is telling.
Brad Kane is editor of the Worcester Business Journal.
