Report: Polar Park hotel delayed to 2025, office building to 2024
Photo | Grant Welker
A proposed mixed-use development across Madison Street from Polar Park has been delayed.
Completion dates for the office and hotel buildings in Madison Properties’ development across the street from Worcester’s Polar Park stadium have been pushed back another year.
The new timelines for the two buildings were reported in a financial analysis of the City from Fitch Ratings Inc., a New York credit rating agency, as part of an assessment of the City of Worcester's financial situation to rate the City's bond offerings.
“A new residential and retail development is underway and planned for completion in 2023; however, the originally planned office facility and hotel have been delayed to 2024 and 2025, respectively,” the report said.
In a September 2020 report from City Manager Edward Augustus, the office building was projected to be complete by 2023 and the hotel was projected to be complete by May 2024. That was the last official update on the projects' timeline, before the release of the ratings report. In compiling the report, Fitch Ratings would have worked with city officials to obtain information on its financial situation.
“The City of Worcester provided [to Fitch] intentionally conservative estimates of revenue realization from the development around Polar Park to the rating agencies, not timelines for building completion,” said Tim McGourthy,Worcester’s chief financial officer, in a statement about Fitch’s report. “The movement of a project by one month – from June to July – can transfer receipts from one fiscal year to the next even while the calendar year opening date does not change.”
The five-building project is located in Polar Park’s District Improvement Financing zone, so the tax revenues collected from the buildings will go toward paying off the cost of the $160-million stadium. In addition to the office building, hotel, and residential building, Madison is planning a second residential building and a laboratory building.
Construction on the first building, a 228-unit residential complex, has begun, and a second residential building is in the design phase, Madison Properties President Denis Dowdle said. The first residential project received $57 million in financing on Jan. 27 and is slated to open by the summer of 2023.
Dowdle has retained Boston architect Elkus Manfredi to design the life sciences building beyond the left field of Polar Park, and he expects to have the revised building permit for that building by May, he said. Dowdle is working with Boston brokerage JLL to bring in tenants for the building.
"We remain committed to this project and are more enthusiastic today than when we started," Dowdle wrote in an email.
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This is what the real world construction industry looks like whether in a pandemic or not.
Does not in any way shape or form affect the payment schedules for Polar Park.
Polar Park is still and will continue to be a resounding success for the City of Worcester much to the chagrin of WBJ.
What happens if the contractor goes bankrupt?
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