Boston's Geographic Center May be Growing

Eden's Inc, the owner of Boston's largest strip mall has submitted a proposal for an urban lifestyle center the likes of which the Newmarket District has never seen.  The property in question sits just beyond the current South Bay Center on land currently occupied by light industrial facilities.  South Bay Center will remain, for the most part, untouched.  

The proposal calls for 500 apartments, 200 hotel rooms, a 65,000sf cinema and 115,000sf of new retail space.  This is very much in line with Mayor Walsh's call for taking a look at transit nodes in this section of the city and converting vacant and underutilized industrial spaces into high density residential use.  The Newmarket Station on the new Fairmount Line is only a few thousand feet from the proposed development and would provide residents direct access to the downtown corridor.  

Newmarket sits adjacent to Widett Circle, the much discussed "geographic center" of Boston and a district that is at the center of discussions to be redeveloped into the focal point of the Boston2024 Olympics.  Following the Olympics the site could then utilize Olympic Infrastructure to redevelop what is now a heavily underutilized area of Boston.  

The South Bay Center expansion will no move through Article 80, Large Project Review at the BRA and is subject to a lengthy community process over the coming months.