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wbjournal.com | October 31, 2022 | Worcester Business Journal 11 E C O N O M I C D E V E L O P M E N T F A C T B O O K Route 146's warehouse boom Businesses fleshing out their logistics networks are eying the wide-open spaces and relatively low costs of the Blackstone Valley BY LAURA FINALDI Special to WBJ W hen it comes to building new warehouse space in Massachusetts, the Blackstone Valley, despite its legendary status as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, tends to get overlooked. But thanks to infrastructure improvements, changes in consumer behavior, and the vast availability of land, that is starting to change. Several large industrial projects have joined the Route 146 corridor over the last several years. RP Masiello of Boylston is building two buildings in Sutton, totaling 1 million square feet, for Unified2 Global Packaging Group. e 640,000-square-foot Blackstone Logistics Center in Sutton, Uxbridge, and Douglas is in the works. In Douglas, ground has already been broken on a new 1.1-million-square- foot facility called e Cubes at Gilboa, which promises to be one of the largest speculative industrial warehouse projects in the entire commonwealth. Jeannie Hebert, president and CEO of the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the hard work local stakeholders have been putting in for years is finally starting to pay off. "It looks like 146 is the new I-495," Hebert said. Not a lot of space, historically e Boston office of international real estate services company Colliers analyzes real estate in Greater Boston on a quarterly basis. e firm releases reports and data several times a year on various real estate markets, including office, industrial, commercial, multifamily, healthcare, and life sciences. Traditionally, Colliers hasn't tracked the Blackstone Valley as a group, research director Jeffrey Myers said. e area just hasn't produced enough industrial activity to put a dent in the overall market, compared to Route 128 South or Boston, Cambridge, and the inner suburbs. at is starting to change, Myers said. Developers have found it's easier to get several acres in areas like the Blackstone Valley because there's so much available land, compared to areas closer to the city. "As demand for large distribution properties has increased in Massachusetts in recent years, the Blackstone Valley has certainly found itself on developers' radar screens," Myers said. "As a result, the geographic scope of the Boston metro industrial market is expanding westward into areas like this." e Cubes at Gilboa, which is under construction and fully permitted, already has interest from several potential tenants, said Ed Jeannie Hebert, president and CEO of the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce Total inventory: Massachusetts' industrial real estate market, as of Q2 2022 Source: Colliers 177,741,629 square feet 5.1% -151,212 square feet $13.96 per square foot Average direct asking rate: Availability rate: Net absorption, second quarter: Largest Central Mass. communities Worcester 206,242 205,918 Framingham 72,162 71,265 Leominster 43,744 43,613 Fitchburg 41,872 41,732 Marlborough 41,700 41,110 Shrewsbury 38,450 38,999 Natick 36,941 36,426 Franklin 33,227 33,036 Milford 30,339 30,277 Acton 23,973 23,846 Community 2020 decennial census 2021 census estimate Source: U.S. Census Bureau Continued on page 12 IMAGE | COURTESY OF COHEN PARTNERS A rendering of the 1-million-square-foot Unified2 Global Packaging Group facility in Sutton