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58 Worcester Business Journal • www.wbjournal.com 25 YEARS: IN REVIEW The Corridor Nine Area Chamber of Commerce of Westborough dissolves its 24-year affiliation with the Worcester Regional chamber, and instead affiliates with the 495/ MetroWest Corridor Partnership. As Corridor Nine President Nancy Carlson said, the switch gave Corridor Nine "a larger voice in a region that has more common goals and issues with us." Ten years after the 32-year-old down- town Worcester retail site was re- launched as the Worcester Common Fashion Outlets, The Galleria Mall is sold for about $30.4 million. At the time of the sale, the mall was all but vacant. Under pressure from Mayor Timothy Murray, the property's owner, Cigna Investments, sells the 22-acre site to Berkeley Investments of Boston. In the latest absorption of a big bank by another big bank, Bank of America buys FleetBoston for an esti- mated $47 billion. But the deal brings job cuts along with the loss of the FleetBoston name. A $500,000 study of the Boston-Worcester commuter rail line is commissioned in February to examine the cost and fea- sibility of adding more trains. However, local leaders say CSX Corp.'s ownership of the Framingham- Worcester track section has stymied those efforts. CSX maintains that any- thing above the 10 weekday round trips offered by the MBTA would be impossible without adding a new track, estimated to cost as much as $30 million. A new "open air" shopping center, The Shoppes at Blackstone Valley, opens in Millbury adjacent to Route 146. The $60-million project contains more than 800,000 square feet of retail space. Developer Berkeley Investments unveils plans for its downtown CitySquare project, which calls for the demolition of the former Worcester Common Fashion Outlets and most of the adjacent parking garage. In their places: a mix of retail and office space, along with new housing in a project city officials hail as the cata- lyst for a downtown revital- ization. After trying for decades, Worcester lands a baseball team as the new Canadian- American Association of Professional Baseball awards the city a franchise in January. The team would be named the Tornadoes and play their home games at Fitton Field on the campus of the College of the Holy Cross. In September, Frederick Eppinger, a native of Spencer, takes over the leader- ship of Allmerica Property & Casualty, which would revert to its old name, Hanover Insurance Group, in 2005. From 2003 to 2005, the company saw its investment ratings upgraded, and was on its way to a strong 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit, changing the financial pic- ture of all property and casualty insurers with Gulf Coast exposure. Nonetheless, today, Hanover is the largest public com- pany in Worcester. As high housing prices in the Greater Boston region pushed buyers west beyond Interstate 495, the MBTA adds commuter rail stations in Ashland (above), Westborough and Southborough during the summer, dramatically opening up western suburban communities for people who work in Boston and are willing to commute longer distances in exchange for housing they can afford. 2003 Plans for Worcester's CitySquare project were unveiled in 2005. 2002 2004 2005