Worcester Business Journal

Worcester Business Journal www.wbjournal.com 2016 Economic Forecast 21 R E A L E S TAT E A European-style, high-end hotel will be the newest member of the CitySquare ecosystem in down- town Worcester beginning in 2017 when it opens with a restaurant, 168 rooms and meeting space. The 120,000-square-foot AC Hotel by Marriott will round out the hotel market in Worcester as the city's only full-service downtown hotel. It will be clearly aimed at business clients, with meeting space integrated into the facility. Worcester has been sitting at under 800 rooms, well below cities of comparable size, and lacked a downtown hotel that combined a restaurant, meeting space and enough hotel rooms to handle major blocks of company clients, Sandy Dunn, general manager of the DCU Center, has said in the past. The luxurious rooms will represent a $30 to $50 premium over the current $150 to $199 high-end Worcester market, and are part of the AC Hotel brand that was launched in Europe in 1998. Four of these hotels will launch in Boston as well, although Worcester will be the most west- erly location in Massachusetts for this hotel brand. The Worcester hotel will cost $33.1 mil- lion to develop and will be located at the corner of Front and Trumble streets. It will support 60 full-time jobs upon completion. T O P R E A L ES TAT E S T O R I ES O F 2 0 1 5 High-end Worcester hotel to add 168 rooms downtown Chip Norton, president of Franklin Realty Advisors, said his office tower renovation could lead to an increase in commercial rents and property values in Worcester. Blink and you might miss a development announce- ment in Worcester. That is the kind of year that 2015 was for the Heart of the Commonwealth. However, with many of these projects set to come online in the next year or two, they are set to spur a second round of development. The groundwork has been set and 2016 will see the early adopters give way to continued investments growing out of City Square. Worcester hits development stride BY SAM BONACCI Worcester Business Journal Digital Editor W orcester has been "up and coming" for decades. For years, however, the pieces of the puzzle seemed to be scattered all around the room. In the last year, the city has seen tremendous leaps forward in development along with bursts of activity that will come to fruition on the coming years, spur- ring on future development. If 2015 was a big year for Worcester real estate, which it was all around, then 2016 seems set to be the year the groundwork truly pays off and starts to snowball into even greater activity. Worcester development primed to explode The MetroWest real estate market has been hot and will be hot in 2016. With prices reaching just this side of true insanity, companies are increasingly appreciating not only the value proposition of the 495 corridor but the Goldilocks nature of the area. With locations that offer a huge amount of space and buildings ready for build out but close enough to Boston and Worcester for collaborations and meet- ings, MetroWest will continue to be the right balance for many companies in 2016. MetroWest will see influx of big companies Worcester has always been a bargain, but now developers are pushing the envelope to create a prod- uct that can warrant higher rents. This will be a slow growth process that involves both investment in individual buildings as well as an overall increase in the image and amenities of the city. With developers tackling the buildings, public transportation increasingly becoming a viable option into Boston and the city set to continue updating the infrastructure, through projects like the $8-million Main Street renovation, increased rents are likely to follow. n Boosted values for Worcester P H O T O / M A T T V O L P I N I Rendering of the proposed $33-million AC Hotel by Marriott, which focuses on luxury.

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