🔒Marlborough’s $200M win: How a developer and the city rose above a dozen proposals to land the state’s coveted crime lab project

The small MetroWest city of Marlborough received a big win earlier in the year, when local officials found out the state had selected the municipality as a site for the new $200-million State Police crime laboratory, beating out other Central Massachusetts proposals at sites from Worcester to Hopkinton. The new four-story, 187,341-square-foot building will replace existing labs in Sudbury and Maynard, bringing 300 jobs to Marlborough while supporting investigations and criminal prosecutions in the region. The February 2024 announcement the State Police were seeking a new Central Massachusetts crime lab drew interest from property owners and developers, with 15 bids submitted by eight different entities. In the end, the winning proposal was submitted by Boston-based developer Greatland Realty Partners for a 26-acre undeveloped site at 100 Martinangelo Drive in Marlborough, selected by the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance. News of Marlborough’s selection first broke in March, with an official announcement in September. The project is set for a spring groundbreaking, with an opening in the first quarter of 2028. The site will be owned by Greatland, with a 20-year lease to the State Police and two 10-year extension options. “Those 300 people are now going to be shopping in our small businesses, potentially staying in the hotels, and putting their discretionary income back into our local economy here,” said Meredith Harris, executive director at the Marlborough Economic Development Corp. State documents acquired via a WBJ public records request shed some insight on why the Marlborough bid was selected over competing bids, even as a number of prominent Central Massachusetts politicians and business leaders threw their weight behind a proposal to bring the crime lab to Worcester’s Canal District neighborhood. While Marlborough moves forward with a project local officials feel is a victory for the city, the nine other properties included in the bid represent potential sites for future development. With many of the proposed sites being undeveloped land or struggling office-focused properties, future redevelopment into other uses for those sites remain on the table for a variety of options.

Marlborough’s winning bid

Greatland’s application shows it plans on working with Boston-based Shawmut Design and Construction to build the lab, with Boston-based Ci Design serving as the project’s architecture. Greatland has experience with developing life science projects and other uses similar to a crime lab, including Riverside Labs, a 16-acre life science campus in Weston. However, this was the company’s first DCAMM bid, said Kevin Sheehan, co-founder and managing partner of Greatland Realty Partners. “It was our first time doing this type of partnership, but I think it's been a very successful process,” Sheehan said. “It's a smart strategy by the state to lease the site. It allows them to use their credit rating as a tenant in a lease, and contract with the private developer to achieve the design and construction of a new facility.” Bid- and evaluation-related documents obtained from DCAMM via a public records request didn’t offer too many specific insights on why other proposals were passed over, instead focusing on what made Greatland’s proposal for a new building in Marlborough the right choice. DCAMM’s evaluation of the proposal highlighted the proposed building’s design, saying it met the specific security and other requirements needed for the crime lab. The agency’s comments focused heavily on transportation and parking, noting the proposed design met specific needs for on-site parking and secure drop-off locations. The site’s easy access to Interstate 495 provides a quick connection to the Massachusetts Turnpike. “Due to the specifications and functionality of the proposed premises, the proposed site and its geographic location, the project team’s experience, as well as support for the Commonwealth’s environmental goals through LEED and Energy Star design, the User Agency has recommended that this proposal best meets all requirements set forth in the RFP,” DCAMM’s comment on its overview of the proposals reads. Marlborough’s willingness to provide a tax incentive financing deal for the $200-million project helped win bids against larger communities like Worcester, said Harris.

The 19-year tax incentive deal approved by the City of Marlborough will offer $8.64 million in property tax savings for the project. The deal offers a 100% exemption through the first two years of operation, lowering over the course of the deal to 10% in its final year. “When you look at Marlborough and Worcester, it comes down to the two communities,” Harris said. “We're located in a very similar area. I believe it came down to the incentive that Marlborough was willing to put on the table.” Beyond the incentive, Harris outlined the region’s talent pool, highway access, and sewer and water infrastructure as other reasons entities both public and private are seeking out Marlborough. “Marlborough has been no stranger to lab type of uses in our community, and those companies that have set up shop here have done really well here,” she said.

Worcester’s missed opportunities

Two bids submitted for properties in Worcester would have helped kickstart two separate stalled economic development efforts. With Worcester continuing to look for ways to boost its efforts to pay off bonds related to the construction of the $160-million Polar Park baseball stadium, Worcester City Manager Eric Batista was hopeful a proposal to build the crime lab by Madison Properties could provide a win for the ballpark district, where other development proposals have been beset with delays and setbacks. Madison’s bid would have seen the construction of a seven-story building at 115 Green Island Blvd., directly across the street from Polar Park. A November 2024 letter from Batista to the Worcester City Council offered the potential development as a way to offset a $2-million funding deficit caused by the lack of development of other parcels in the district. Batista was hardly the only public official throwing his weight behind the Madison Properties bid, as the proposal included a letter of support from Sen. Michael Moore (D-Worcester), Sen. Robyn Kennedy (D-Worcester), and Sen. Peter Durant (R-Southbridge), as well as five area state representatives. Worcester Mayor Joe Petty also penned a letter of support. News of the Madison Properties bid losing led to protest from Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce President & CEO Timothy Murray, who told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette the results were evidence DCAMM is broken. He called for the agency’s priorities to be updated to consider Gov. Maura Healey’s pledge to invest in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. In contrast to the Marlborough bid, where ample surface parking could be constructed at the undeveloped site, Madison’s bid sought to utilize the 348-space parking garage it constructed at neighboring 115 Madison St. The developer offered 248 monthly parking spaces at an initial cost of $200 per space, per month, with 100 additional spots available on a first-come, first-serve basis. With the state’s request-for-proposals calling for at least 510 parking spaces, Madison offered an additional 66 surface parking spots at 149 Washington St., for a rate of $125 per space, per month. The proposal mentions nearby on-street, metered parking, as well as additional nearby seven surface lots and garages within a half-mile of the site. Due to historical contamination at the site once used by industrial manufacturer Wyman-Gordon, construction would have required building a subslab depressurization system, which creates a vacuum beneath a structure in order to prevent harmful gases leaking into the building from below. DCAMM’s calculation for the total cost of the Madison Properties project to the state was $337.58 million, about 26.6% higher than the winning Marlborough bid’s projected cost of $266.55 million. The Madison Properties bid wasn’t the only proposal submitted from Worcester, as local real estate firm Kelleher & Sadowsky Associates submitted a bid on behalf of Webster-based Galaxy Life Sciences, seeking to construct a new lab in The Reactory biomanufacturing park in Worcester. If selected, the Galaxy proposal would have been a boon for The Reactory project. Other than a WuXi Biologics facility first announced in 2020 and still under construction, the 46-acre park has yet to come to fruition. Unlike the Madison proposal, The Reactory proposal didn’t feature political support from local officials as part of its bid documents.

Bids from around Central Mass.

Greatland didn’t put all its eggs in one basket. In addition to its winning proposal, the company submitted two other bids to redevelop existing office properties. One called for redevelopment of the 176,840-square-foot building at 250 Campus Drive in Marlborough, a site utilized as the headquarters of $17-billion health technology company Hologic. Greatland’s other proposal would have seen the former BJ's Wholesale Club headquarters off of Route 9 in Westborough redeveloped into the crime lab.

“We weren't sure whether DCAMM was going to prefer a new construction or an existing facility,” Sheehan said. The proposal with the lowest occupying cost as calculated by DCAMM would have been a proposal to construct a new building at 124 Westboro Road in Grafton, a site formerly part of Grafton State Hospital. This effort would have been led by Boston-based GFI Partners, which has developed at least three other industrial sites in Central Massachusetts, according to the company’s website. Other bids sought to redevelop sites formerly used by EMC, a technology firm whose Central Massachusetts footprint has dramatically declined since its 2016 merger with Dell Technologies. One bid, submitted by New York-headquartered real estate firm Newmark, sought to redevelop and expand a former EMC building at 52 South St. in Hopkinton, while another bid submitted by Framingham-based Atlantic Management Corp. called for the redevelopment of 32 Coslin Drive, another former EMC location. A third proposed property also had a tie to EMC, as Boston-based Redgate and Virginia-based FD Stonewater formed a joint venture to pitch 900 West Park Drive in Westborough. The four-story office building at the site was built for EMC in 2000 but has remained unoccupied since. Worcester-based Tonuse Inc. threw its hat into the crime lab ring, submitting six different bids for 7-9 Latti Farm Road in Millbury, the former site of a Worcester Telegram printing press later used by the Boston Globe. The Millbury bids offered the state different potential lease rates, with DCAMM calculations showing the total cost of those bids would have fallen in the range of $280 million to $373 million. Eric Casey is the managing editor at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the real estate and banking & finance industries.