[oliver]

Finally something exciting is going on in Worcester Downtown:

"Through a private-public partnership, CitySquare will replace the Worcester Common Outlets Mall, an underutilized facility that occupies a strategic 20.2-acre site in the heart of Worcester, MA, with a lively urban district that integrates office, residential, retail and entertainment uses within a newly created open-air environment.

Undertaking the estimated $500 million mixed-use development is Berkeley Investments, Inc., of Boston, MA, which purchased the site for $30.35 million in June, 2004 with its investment partner, Starwood Capital Global Group LLC of Greenwich, CT. The project, which encompasses approximately 2.1 million square feet of office, residential and retail space will be completed in several phases over the next eight years. Berkeley has tapped Arrowstreet of Somerville, MA, a multi-disciplined design firm that specializes in Urban Design, as project architect."

http://www.newcitysquare.com/

I will try to shoot some photos of the still existing Outlet Mall downtown before they start the demolition. Than I will try to get updated photos of the site on a regular basis. It's probably the last chance Worcester gets to revitalize its downtown, so it needs some attention.

[Recchia]

This seems pretty cool. Have they already started tearin down the mall?

[TheBostonian]

They use Harvard Square in their intro:

[vanshnookenraggen]

This will never be like Harvard Sq. It is too much like a suburban office park, just with a flashy name. It isn't dense enough.

[TheBostonian]

And nothing could be like Harvard Square without a subway.

[oliver]

TheBostonian, on Oct 29 2005, 01:34 PM, said:

And nothing could be like Harvard Square without a subway.

Jesus, of course this won't be like Harvard Square. We are still talking about Worcester. But around the park Worcester has pretty nice buildings and a nice Main Street, City Square would reconnect this part of town to the Union Station and Shrewsburry Street (The Italian / Restaurant section of the town). Plus it will include upscale condos, which will bring people downtown. I took some pictures of the current mall, which is now empty, but still open. It was kind of weird to walk in a completely empty mall. Now could somebody explain to me how I upload picture on this page???

I've heard they will start demolition in November.

[Cotuit]

oliver, on Oct 29 2005, 07:29 PM, said:

Now could somebody explain to me how I upload picture on this page???

First you need to find a place to host the image online. I use Photobucket, but there are several other free services out there. Once you have the image hosted, follow the directions below:

[oliver]

Thank you Cotuit, I'll get right on it.

[oliver]

That's a view from Front Street (from the park). The office towers to the left and right will stay, but the street will open up:

[oliver]

And that's the reverse view (from inside the mall out on the park). The place where I was taking the picture from will be the extension of Front Street:

[oliver]

That's inside the mall, it is still open, but empty, all the stores are closed - a ghost mall. It is a pretty weird feeling to walk around in it:






Yeah, let's hope so...

This post has been edited by oliver: 30 October 2005 - 07:20 AM

[oliver]

Here a shot from the Center Boulevard, this is where Front Street will come out. Currently the mall blocks the complete downtown:



And here a shot from Foster Street, can't wait till this ugly mall is gone. When I was walking around in it, I was tempted to get some tools and start demolition myself:



OK. Enough of this. I will post more photos as soon as the demolition begins and will give updates on the developments. By the way, if somebody is living in the Worcester area, a friend of mine was just buying a penthouse condo downtown and very close to the planned development for under $200K (including 2 rooftops). They build loft space all around downtown right now and I guess that's a great investment...if this project is successful prices will skyrock (no, i don't work in real estate!).

Here an article about loft developments in Worcester, the article was recently published in the Worcester Telegram: http://www.theabrams...p?Nav=Article26

This post has been edited by oliver: 30 October 2005 - 10:42 AM

[Recchia]

I always found it ironic and interesting that Hartford and Worcester are revitalizing their downtown's by tearing down malls, while Providence built one right in its downtown as part of its revitalization. I guess what's good for one isn't good for all...

What's the history of the Worcester Commons? And what's it like from an urban planning perspective, is it surrounded by surface parking or is it more urban?

[Cotuit]

Recchia, on Oct 30 2005, 12:12 PM, said:

What's the history of the Worcester Commons?

Worcester Commons is weird, it did pretty well for a while, I remember living in Boston in the 90s and knowing lots of poeple that would go out there a lot to shop. For some reason, it just stopped attracting people, more or better options closer to the city I guess (Wrentham Outlets may have hurt it, especially when they started running buses from Boston).

As you can see from Oliver's photos, the mall lays right across important downtown streets, killing off the street life (I think Hartford's mall has similar street life killing characteristics). As we know in Providence, our mall has a detrimental effect on east-west pedestrian traffic, but that's not really an important movement direction in that area. Couple that with the storefronts on Francis, and Providence Place actually adds to the street life instead of killing it. Now imagine if Providence Place were turned 90 degrees and blocked Francis Street and had no streetfront restaurant/retail...

Norfolk (or VA.Beach or one of those Hampton Roads cities) has a mall very similar to Providence Place which sits in the street grid and has streetfront retail, it is proving to have a similar effect on that city as Providence Place had on Providence.

[Cotuit]

You can see on this map that Worcester Commons is this giant blob sitting right in the middle of the cityscape.

[oliver]

I think you are absolutely right there Cotuit. The Providence Mall is a nice addition to Providence Downtown, with storefronts and restaurants on streetlevel. Even when the Worcester Outlet mall was successful it never improved Worcester downtown. People were driving to it, parked in it and got out as soon as they were done shopping. It worked like a suburban mall, no use to have something like this downtown.

[Garris]

oliver, on Oct 30 2005, 01:53 PM, said:

I think you are absolutely right there Cotuit. The Providence Mall is a nice addition to Providence Downtown, with storefronts and restaurants on streetlevel. Even when the Worcester Outlet mall was successful it never improved Worcester downtown. People were driving to it, parked in it and got out as soon as they were done shopping. It worked like a suburban mall, no use to have something like this downtown.

Actually, my rough guess is that for about 95% of Providence Place Mall shoppers, "suburban style" is exactly how they treat the mall itself. But those street level shops and restaurants really do make the surrounding area feel vibrant and link it to the downtown.

Providence Place's success is also, I think, due in large part to being a "friendly face" for the city for those from the burbs and also and serving as the city's defacto parking garage. The mall sits not right in the downtown, but right at the "gateway" to it. With the Waterplace park, train station, and Capitol flanking the mall, and with the gaping wide entrance to downtown with the skyline looming over it right in front of the mall's major entrances with its streetfront shops, the layout just begs people to go wander and explore.

It's only going to get better with the prominent street level retail and restaurants that are going to be built in new structures across the street from and down the street from the existing mall within the next year.

Who would have guessed a mall would anchor one of New England's newest pedestrian neighborhoods?

- Garris

[Cotuit]

I asked the Norfolk people to find some pics of their mall. You can find them here.

[Recchia]

Cotuit, on Oct 31 2005, 02:45 PM, said:

I asked the Norfolk people to find some pics of their mall. You can find them here.

I like how parts of that mall don't look anything like a mall. the best mall to me is one that really isn't one. I like Providence Place a lot, I only wish it had street retail on the north side too.

[cloudship]

Back in the 60's, Worcester hired a big name architect to design a new urban complex for the city to try and bring life into what was a dying downtown. I forget his name (he did a big plan for South Station in Boston, too). They then ditched the guy and hired a construction company to build what was a replica version of what he designed. Anyway, the mall (originally called the Galleria) did OK for a while, but was really hurt by the parking situation - people had to drive to get to the place, and it was just as easy and cheaper to go to Auburn Mall or Searstown. So the place kinda died out. Then in the eighties a company thought of turning it into an Outlet mall, which in the end didn't work beacuse no one really was interested in the type of shops they had, and no one would pay for parking, even if it was only a couple of dollars.

One of the reasons why people didn't spill out from the mall into downtown was beacuse they had no desire. Downtown Worcester is not the cleanest area, people didn't exactly feel safe, nor was there anything of interest there. It's mostly small offices, few restaurants (no restaurants?) or shops or anything. I am not sure that this is going to be as great as they are hyping it up to be - from my understanding a lot of the residential bits are intended for the college of Pharmacy, it's going to be mostly office space, and there is no real focal point.

From what I heard from people there, don't expect any external demolition until the spring. If it stays up that long - the roof is leaking all over the place, and the garage feels like it is falling down on it's own.