A developer is seeking city approval to construct a 710,000-square-foot warehouse development across four buildings at Analogic in Centennial Park, a site once eyed for an Amazon distribution site.
The developer, Tishman Speyer, a real-estate company based in New York, is making its first foray into industrial development with the project, where space would be available for various light manufacturing, warehouse, and distribution sites for companies, the company’s senior director, Steve Morris, said. Tishman Speyer has more than three decades of experience as a developer in Boston, where most of its work was in the “downtown tower space,” Morris said.
Now, the company is seeking to redevelop the site Analogic has called home for decades, but is doing so on a “speculative basis” with no specific tenants in mind for the spaces it is seeking to build. Morris said the company was drawn to the Centennial Park site because of its location, being near both Route 128 and Interstate 95, which he said would be “really attractive” to industrial users. At the site, each of the buildings would be oriented around trucks and loading spaces.
Tishman Speyer already has an agreement in place with Analogic for the site, and the company will be given a year to wind down its operations in Peabody. From there, the existing buildings on the site would be razed and the site would be leveled before construction would begin.
Construction would be undertaken in stages over a two-year to two-and-a-half-year timeline, with buildings being delivered in 2026 and 2027.
The new warehouse site would be a “great place for businesses to grow,” Morris told the Planning Board last week.
Senior Planner Andrew Levin told members that the Community Development and other city officials had met with Tishman Speyer, and expressed a desire to see increased pedestrian movement, safety, and sidewalks on the site as well as “somewhere for workers to have some sort of open space or walkability.”
“This is a very large project, I think it is going to be an extensive review,” Levin said.
Morris said he anticipated there could be upwards of a dozen lessees with space at the new warehouse site.
Attorney John Keilty, who is representing the developer, told members that each tenant would need to seek a building permit for their own space, as Morris described the warehouses as being delivered in “core-shell condition.” As a result, any uses would be evaluated on their own merits, and if a special permit is required for the proposed use, the specific applicant would be subject to that review process.
“We expect (the) tenant list will be predominantly logistics type and style,” Keilty said.
And, Morris said the project would appeal to companies who have been otherwise priced out of industrial warehouse sites by big-box stores.
Levin said the city had expressed to Tishman Speyer that it would like the existing driveways on the property to act as roadways, so that no tractor-trailers were parked on the side of the road and no items were left out.
Morris confirmed that at least one on-site manager would be present at the site to oversee its functions.
The Planning Board ultimately opted to continue the project to its December meeting, and Levin suggested the developer return periodically as peer reviews come in, rather than having the board evaluate each review at once because of the sheer scale of the project.
