Before the Pawtucket Red Sox came along, Dowdle was going to build something off Madison Street in Worcester similar to what he put up at the former U.S. Steel facility in Quinsigamond Village with a Walmart Supercenter-anchored development.
Now, the minor league baseball PawSox will become the Worcester Red Sox in April 2021, and they’ll play at Polar Park, a ballpark being built across from the formerly contaminated and long-underutilized land Dowdle bought. Dowdle has pitched a major project potentially doing as much to reshape the Canal District as the ballpark itself: a dual-branded hotel with 262 rooms, a 121,000-square-foot commercial building, a 60,000-square-foot commercial building, and a 125-unit residential building. What could be a brutal recession, particularly to the retail industry, will add a hurdle to a project whose revenue is expected to largely account for enough new tax income for the city that – city officials insist – the $132-million ballpark will more than pay for itself. Even though in January he downsized the size of his WooSox-related project from $140 million to $125 million, his efforts still remain a vital piece of the Canal District overhaul and the financial future of the city. Dowdle isn’t a big name, but he’s already pulled off development of another infamous site: a contaminated plot in Woburn whose history was so sordid it was made into the 1998 movie “A Civil Action” with John Travolta.
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