Deal tied to revitalization plans
When is a single-family home on Dean Street in Worcester worth $1.5 million?
When it’s the lynchpin to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s plan to develop its campus east toward Gateway Park and downtown.
Without 35 Dean St., “WPI would have been precluded from proceeding with its plans for revitalization,” said school spokesman Chris Hardwick. “As a result, the property had a significantly high value to the university.”
WPI paid $1.5 million for the house on Feb. 21 and plans to demolish it to make way for a dorm.
The home at 35 Dean St. was a privately owned home used by WPI campus police for a number of years.
According to Hardwick, the property was “the last parcel that the university needed in order to utilize land and begin to revitalize the lower part of the campus.”
The Gateway Park project, to which the university wants to connect its campus, is the redevelopment of a 63-acre industrial brownfield into an 11-acre mixed-use life sciences park.
WPI and the Worcester Business Development Corp. are heading the project.
The project’s first building, the 124,600-square-foot, $35 million WPI Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center at 60-68 Prescott St., is expected to open this month.
The development is also planned to include a parking facility for 683 cars. Sites for buildings of 80,000 square feet, 100,000 sqare feet, and 160,000 square feet could also be accommodated on the Gateway Park site. An additional 1.7-acre parcel at 75 Grove St. is available for housing development.
