Vision for Downtown Attleboro slowly but surely takes shape
ATTLEBORO — The city wasn’t built in a day and it won’t be rebuilt in a day, but it seems well on its way.
For more than two decades city officials have been working to restore a downtown once filled with stores and customers.
It’s been the focus of three mayoral administrations – Mayor Judy Robbins, Mayor Kevin Dumas and now Mayor Paul Heroux.
Each has put their stamp on the effort.
But back in 2008, former Attleboro Redevelopment Authority board member Don Smyth made it clear that deeply rooted change takes time.
The changes in the city are “an evolution, not a revolution,” he said, adding, “The vision is there, the plan is there, but it’s not something that happens overnight.”
“The work that I did in 2018 is just being seen on the street right now,” he said in a recent interview. “Work that we were doing in 2018 and 2019 is going to be seen on the street in 2021. The work that we are doing in 2021 is going to be seen on the street in 2022 and 2023.
“There is a several-year lag from the start of the talks to when people walking or driving by can see change. But there is no question that change is here.”
The impetus for revitalization of downtown came in 1999.
In October of that year, U.S. Rep. James McGovern, who was then Attleboro’s congressman, announced that the city received $500,000 in federal aid to put toward the construction of a parking garage and bus station complex downtown.
At that point the parking garage became central to the revitalization effort.
There were plans to put retail stores on the first floor of what was to be a 550-space garage.
There was a proposal to put an ice rink on top of it and to build a row of townhouses.
One plan put the garage on Union Street where Composite Modules, one of the few remaining factories in a downtown that was once flush with them, stands now.
Now, 22 years later, plans to bring residences into the center of the city are flourishing, but ironically there’s still no parking garage.
There’s a possibility it could be done in conjunction with the MBTA and GATRA, or a private developer, Economic Development Director Catherine Feerick said.
But the essence of what the garage represented is very much alive and was recently touted in an article written by Tracey A. Corley, a Transit-Oriented Development Fellow at the nonprofit Mass INC. The group aims to spur development in Massachusetts “Gateway Cities,” of which Attleboro is one.
The goal with the garage at first was to get commuters to patronize local businesses, but now the goal is to get them to live here.
Corley said in her article, dated Jan. 24 and published in Banker & Tradesman, that Gateway Cities like Attleboro are especially poised to do just that, especially in the wake of coronavirus.
The virus has perhaps given the city another shot in the arm.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has changed long-established assumptions, behaviors and concepts regarding how and where we work and what we expect from the places we live,” she wrote. “While vaccines may soon bring the pandemic to an end, our workplaces, commutes and lifestyles have been changed forever.”
Gateway Cities like Attleboro, which have MBTA stations and where taking the train to Boston or Providence is a better option than driving, could benefit greatly.
She noted that rents are going up outside Boston, which indicates a shortage of apartments. That in turn motivates developers to build more and to provide accessory businesses needed in places where people live.
“These realities present opportunities for unleashing the commercial real estate potential of Gateway Cities... through transformative transit-oriented development,” she said.
Mass INC. defines Gateway Cities as “midsize urban centers that anchor regional economies … for generations, these communities were home to industry that offered residents good jobs and a ‘gateway’ to the American Dream.”
But much of that industry has gone away.
In Attleboro, downtown was once the vital heart of a vital mill town filled with hard-working people punching the clock every day.
The intersection of North and South Main, County and Park streets was the retail center, and just around each corner were the mills where those people worked.
They spent the money they earned in those downtown stores.
There was a hardwired interconnection between mills and stores.
Factories were the lifeblood of retail, but that lifeblood bled out.
In the last 25 years at least 19 buildings, most factories near the center, have been razed.
Now something needs to replace the mills and their workers.
As Corley indicated in her article, the iron is hot and it’s time to strike and shape the future.
And that’s exactly what’s happening now inside and outside of downtown’s new transit-oriented zoning district.
That district is comprised of just under 19 acres and is bordered by Wall Street on the north and Olive Street on the south, Ten Mile River on the west and the MBTA commuter rail line on the east.
Most of the acreage is owned by the Attleboro Redevelopment Authority which is preparing it for sale.
The goal is to create a bustling mixed-use “urban village” on the site.
TOD zones can transform Gateway cities into desired, affordable, communities where residents can work, shop and even be entertained, Feerick said.
She said a recent real estate report from CoStar for outlying areas of Bristol County including Attleboro reported that apartment vacancies are low, which indicates a big need.
“Within our sub-region the current rental vacancy rate is an astonishing 2.3 percent due to the increase in Boston-area renters relocating around the train line,” she said. “This indicates a real supply shortage.”
And that’s a good thing for Attleboro which is building, building, building.
What exactly is coming? About $68 million worth of investment.
A 136-unit building at South Main and Wall at roughly $20 million.
There will be 59 units in the Foster Building at 37 Union at about $25 million.
Another 43 units in the Ingraham Building at 54 Union for $11 million and 46 units at 29 South Main, the former Briggs Hotel, which will soon be added to the list of razed buildings, for $12 million.
All of that could just be the beginning, Heroux said.
“Some of the projects that are being discussed right now cannot be released just yet,” he said. “But it is safe to say that seven to eight new housing projects are in the works.”
The evolution appears to be well underway.