Worcester Business Journal

38 Worcester Business Journal | October 28, 2024 | wbjournal.com For over 70 years, Seven Hills Foundation & Affiliates has been Answering the Call to Care for our neighbors in need, overcoming obstacles to basic resources and building communities of care. It takes action to achieve measurable change. For 35 years, the Worcester Business Journal has supported Seven Hills' efforts to ease the oppressive grip of unrelenting challenges so that our families and neighbors can thrive and be well. Thank you, WBJ, for giving voice to the abilities of us all. 81 Hope Avenue, Worcester, MA 01603 • 508.755.2340 • sevenhills.org jjbafaro.com | (508) 757-7429 | 9 Winter Street, Worcester, MA 01613 We applaud Worcester Business Journal for 35 years of fostering a prosperous and sustainable business community. were the go-to retail centers in the early 1900s, because of the proximity to bustling neighborhoods, but aer World War II people started moving out to the suburbs, creating the need for shopping closer to growing resi- dential areas, said Karl Seidman, an economic development consultant retired from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cities responded at first, Seidman said, by trying to be more like suburbs. Highways like Interstate 290 were built in the 1970s to make it easier for people to travel back and forth, and cities like Worcester and Boston built malls in busy urban areas. e idea of the so-called "festival mar- ketplace" was introduced in the 1970s and 1980s; in Massachusetts, the poster child for this idea, Seidman said, is Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace. In the late 1970s, the federal government introduced the Urban Development Action Grant program to fund downtown areas struggling aer suburban sprawl. e success of these various attempts at retail dominance depended on the economic context in which they happened, Seidman said. "A large mall project in downtown that doesn't have a substantial residential base, or is in an urban center that doesn't have workers and a lot of tourists, it's difficult to make it work if it's dependent on getting a lot of residents around the region to head into the city to shop," he said. "It's always going to be more convenient for people in the suburbs to drive and park than it will be to go downtown." WBJ Continued from previous page What's there today Aer its transformation into an outlet mall in 1994, the former Galleria space found itself once again gasping for air in the early 2000s. By then, the Wrentham Village Outlets had opened and other shopping centers like the Greendale Mall, the Solomon Pond Shopping Center and the Auburn Mall were surrounded by areas with more homes. In 2003, Murray, then the mayor of Worcester, said it was time to explore alternate uses for the downtown mall property. "It was both a financial and psychological anchor around the city, so there was the idea of tearing it down, recreating a logical street grid, and creating a mixed-use district," he said. While Murray was chief among those at the vanguard of the CitySquare movement, it was Daniel R. Benoit, an architect in the city development office, who in 1999 initially sug- gested connecting Washington Square and Union Station with downtown by demolish- ing part of the mall. Full demolition happened in 2010. By then, the city was working with Opus Invest- ment Management, an arm of the Hanover Insurance Group, and its development partner Leggat McCall Properties on future plans for the site. Norton said he started developing projects in Worcester in the late 1970s and early 1980s, starting in Webster Square and including One Chestnut Place. When the Front Street build- ings came across his desk, he was intrigued but backed away aer an initial inspection. He saw problems. "When I looked at it initially, it had too much retail space available, including sec- Continued on next page 35th Anniversary Can the Mercantile Center (left) and the Mercantile restau- rant (right) succeed where the Galleria and Worcester Common Outlets failed? Time will tell.

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