1,000 Units, Lab Buildings, Hotels: Developer Pitches Revealed For 28-Acre Medford Air Rights Project
The future of 28 acres of air rights near the Wellington Orange Line station in Medford has come into clearer focus after the city revealed the eight bids it received from developers for the property.
Of the new concept designs, South Carolina-based apartment giant Greystar has proposed the most housing, with 1,200 to 1,450 units. The proposal consists of three buildings, two of which would have six floors with 250 and 300 units, and one would have seven floors with 650 units, Banker & Tradesman first reported.
“The City had been sitting on these air rights for decades and had not realized the potential the area had for creating a transformative environment for significant commercial and residential growth,” Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn said in a press release.
A concept from The Davis Cos. would bring far less development, proposing 124K SF to 134K SF of residential with 131 to 140 units. The units would be broken up into three seven-story buildings overlooking the Malden River.
New England Development proposed a mixed-use project with 280 to 300 housing units. Its proposal also includes 420K SF of life sciences and 25K SF of retail development. RISE Together proposed a 963K SF mix of unspecified hospitality and residential.
Other proposals came from HYM Investments, Quaker Lane Capital, Able Co., and Preotle, Lane & Associates.
The site, broken up into a 10.75-acre parcel near the Malden River and a 17.3-acre parcel near the Wellington station parking garage, is owned by the MBTA, but the city owns the air rights over the train tracks that would connect the two pieces of land.
To comply with the partnership, the developer who wins the project will have to work around the MBTA's build-out of a two-story, 200-space electric bus storage and maintenance facility on the site.
Medford released a draft master plan last summer that included plans for redeveloping the Wellington site. In November, the city released the list of eight developers that answered its request for information.
CORRECTION, JAN. 8, 8:30 P.M. ET: A previous version of this story misstated the location of the site in the headline. The story has been updated.
