Tribeca Owner To Develop Charlton Site | 18K square feet to include retail and office on Route 20
Photo/Matthew L. Brown
Steven Greene, co-owner of Tribeca restaurant in Worcester and principal of Forever Hopeful LLC, developer of Yankee Crossing in Charlton.
Photo/Matthew L. Brown
Steven Greene, co-owner of Tribeca restaurant in Worcester and principal of Forever Hopeful LLC, developer of Yankee Crossing in Charlton.
Steven Greene, co-owner of Tribeca restaurant in Worcester, has owned the property at 16 Worcester Road in Charlton for long enough to know that now is the time to develop it thanks to a huge mixed-use development planned for just down the road.
When it's complete, Greene's Yankee Crossing will total 18,000 square feet, have first-floor retail space fronting Route 20 and second-floor professional office space at grade and with entrances at the rear of the building. Greene said the office space would be marketed to dentists, doctors and other medical professionals. The site also includes a 2,500-square-foot pad for development as a bank.
Development Coattails
Greene hopes to capitalize on the massive 600,000-square-foot retail development being undertaken by Farmington, Conn.-based Konover Development Corp. just to the east of his property, which is very near the intersection of Route 20 (Worcester Road) and Route 169. Charlton has recently shown population gains without much commercial development, aside from Konover's, to go along with it.
High demand for retail and office uses has spurred development, but even with developers, "there's a lot of wait-and-see," said Michael Jacobs from Worcester-based Glickman Kovago & Co. He's been hired as the broker for the project.
The Konover project is anchored by big-box stores and is expected to take four years to develop. And Konover is now concentrating on development of the big-boxes. Smaller retailers, service providers and restaurants will probably fill in the development after the big boxes, Jacobs said.
"Charlton doesn't have a lot of space for retail storefronts, or Class A office space," Greene said.
While Jacobs acknowledged that "not a lot of banks are expanding right now," he and Greene both said they were comfortable assuming demand would bring a bank to Yankee Crossing sooner rather than later.
Greene said demand has grown for retail businesses and professional services along with Charlton's population, which has boomed in the last decade. "There's a lot of demand in Charlton, but there's nothing, none of the services that people want between Auburn and Sturbridge."
Jacobs said that's a real estate challenge as well as an opportunity.
"It's a challenge," he said, "because it's such a rural market, there's really nothing to (compare)" to when setting lease rates for commercial space. Greene, Jacobs said, "needs to achieve a certain amount of rent" to make the project work, and will set rates accordingly. Also, with very little existing space, commercial development in Charlton is left largely to those with the wherewithal to build new space.
Options Are Open
Jacobs said Greene would also entertain offers to buy the development outright. "He wants to get started as soon as possible, but he would sell the permitted development," he said.
Greene said he didn't have a project budget.
According to Alan I. Gordon, director of Charlton's economic development commission, the mostly wooded, 4-acre Yankee Crossing site will be cleared and an existing retail building will be demolished. There's also a diner on the site, which Greene plans to either keep or donate to the American Diner Museum in Providence.
Gordon said the development looks "very charming" in site plans.
"He put a lot of design effort into it, landscaping, streetscaping. We like the combination of retail shops and professional offices. It's really wooded behind the diner, and the buildings will be back where those woods are," he said.
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