Plan B For Worcester's Gateway Park
Photo/Brandon Butler
BUILDING UP: WPI hopes to break ground on the next phase of Gateway Park by the end of the year. From left to right, Paul Wengender, CEO of Blue Sky Biotech, WPI President Dennis Berkey and Gov. Deval Patrick speak about the Gateway Park initiative last month in Worcester.
In 2009 Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Danvers developer Kavanagh Advisory Group LLC reached an agreement for the construction of the next phase of the biotechnology park in Worcester’s downtown.
But construction never got beyond the planning stages.
Now, WPI officials, at an event with the governor last month, announced that once again they hope the project will break ground on the next phase of Gateway Park by the end of the year, this time with a new developer that has not yet been finalized.
“This isn’t just about developing one more building, this is about finding a development partner for 320,000 square feet of possible buildings,” said WPI executive vice president and CFO Jeffrey Solomon. “We’re looking for a company that has those similar goals and objectives as we do.”
Apparently, that company was not the Kavanagh Group.
Neither Kavanagh nor WPI officials would get into details as to why the letter of intent Kavanagh and WPI signed last year was allowed to expire, which Solomon said was a mutual decision.
“At the end of the day it just wasn’t working out for either of us,” Solomon said.
Owner John Kavanagh was equally reticent to give a specific reason for the deal falling apart.
“I’m sure they’ll do a great job,” he said.
Kavanagh Advisory Group LLC has led construction of more than a dozen higher education, hospital and corporate construction projects, including Harvard University’s business school and the University of Vermont, according to the company’s website.
The company was founded in 1983 and has grown to more than 400 employees, its website states.
David Forsberg, president of the Worcester Business Development Corp., said the agreement between Kavanagh and WPI broke apart because of the complex nature of the project. The WBDC had been a partner of WPI’s in developing the park until late March when WPI bought out WBDC’s stake in the project for an undisclosed amount. WBDC has remained an adviser and is helping to execute some of the public grants the project has received.
“This is absolutely tricky stuff,” Forsberg said. “In the course of a project there is back and forth with the developer and the owner and sometimes it’s just not easy to make the numbers work.”
Gateway Park began about a decade ago as a partnership between WPI and the WBDC to create laboratory and incubator space for life sciences companies and to support WPI academics.
The first new building in the park, the 120,000-square-foot WPI Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, was completed in 2007 and now houses small companies such as RXi Pharmaceuticals Corp., Blue Sky Biotech Inc. and CellThera, as well as the Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives, which provides lab space for life sciences startup companies. There is a 660-car parking garage next door.
The next phase in the Gateway Park project is to build an 80,000- to 100,000-square-foot building on vacant land adjacent to the Bioengineering Center.
WPI President Dennis Berkey said at an event with Gov. Deval Patrick last month that the new building is in the “final stages” of planning. Solomon said after the event the college is working “quickly” to identify a long-term developer partner for remaining aspects of the project.
Once ground is broken, Solomon said he expects construction to take about 18 months.
Some companies in Gateway Park are eagerly awaiting the new construction.
Paul Wengender, CEO of Blue Sky Biotech Inc., has about 40 employees at the Bioengineering Center and said he hopes to double the size of his work space to about 10,000 square feet once the new building is constructed. The company makes biotechnology samples for companies.
“We’re running out of space,” he said about the company’s current location in the Bioengineering building.
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