Shop Talk: Urgency And Patience
David P. Forsberg was "born and bred" in Worcester, and is currently the president of the Worcester Business Development Corp., an agency that is leading several key downtown redevelopment projects, including Gateway Park and the transformation of the old Poli Palace Theatre into the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, which is scheduled to open March 14. The agency recently moved from space it shared with the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce on Main Street to newly renovated space on Shrewsbury Street. Here Forsberg discusses the move, the status of those two key projects as well as the future for the WBDC.
How are you settling in to your new space?
We've been here a little over three months. We love the new space. It was a good business decision, but it also has been great because there's something special about a fresh start.
What are the next steps for the Gateway Park project?
Let me quickly go over the progress. In partnership with a private partner we've done a $5.5 million renovation of a historic building at 85 Prescott St. and that building is doing well. More specifically on Gateway, the partnership of Worcester Polytechnic and WBDC has now completed the first new building in the park. It was a renovation of a historic building and the construction of a new state-of-the-art lab building. And then another partnership that we have called New Garden Park has completed the parking garage.
Right now we're in discussions with a developer and we're trying to reach a project development agreement with them to do the parcel that includes, at the southern end of the park, two pads on the corner of Prescott and Concord streets. We have a memorandum of understanding with a developer and we're in the process of turning that into a development agreement.
The other big project on your plate is the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts. Were there any big surprises that you ran into with that project?
This has been a very, very difficult construction project. It's always very difficult to do older buildings and renovate them. Every time we opened a wall or looked at one area of the building we discovered things that needed to be corrected or needed to be saved.
Do you have a new project in the works since the Hanover Theatre is winding down?
We're always looking for the next thing. The WBDC just completed a new strategic plan. Coming out of the plan was a real focus on downtown. We're working very closely with the city manager to see if there's a role we can play in helping with broader downtown strategy to piggyback on Gateway and the theater.
Would that focus run in concert with CitySquare?
It's all tied together. We're a nonprofit organization and our role is to do projects that benefit the city. When the market can do things without us we celebrate that. We think that all of our work should be complementary to projects like CitySquare. Our job is to make sure that the dominoes start falling and that the market does succeed in Worcester and I think we're at a point where that's going to happen.
I've been doing this for a long time and I've never seen such consensus about economic development in Worcester. I think there's a sense of optimism.
If CitySquare doesn't start to move don't you think some of that optimism is going to dissipate?
I think the point is Worcester has had a history of doing things one at a time, and now for the first time in a long time I see a lot of things being worked on at the same time. People have to understand that when things are large and market driven and complicated it very often takes a long time for them to happen, which is why you have to be working at every level. You have to be granular and you have to be grand. You do a number of things at once so there's a success schedule that keeps flowing. There has to be the right combination of urgency and patience.
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