Image courtesy of Prellwitz Chilinski Assoc.,
The future of a large redevelopment of the former Bedford Macy’s site is now up in the air following developers’ request to town officials that they be able to replace a proposed movie theater and office complex with almost 300 residential units.
The Market and Main site was originally intended as a mixed office-retail project, anchored by a Whole Foods grocery store and a 55,000-square-foot movie theater. The original project also had a 125-key hotel, 49,750 square feet of office space, 51,300 square feet of medical office space and 112,791 square feet of retail. The project master plan was approved in 2016, with individual building designs OK’d in 2018. So far, only the Whole Foods building and two separate buildings housing a Trader Joe’s supermarket at a Friendly Toast restaurant have been built.
Developer Encore Enterprises was not immediately available for comment. However, a memo from the company’s attorney to town staff stated a “lack of demand, high vacancy in the existing office sector and a significant delta between local leasing rates and ever-increasing construction costs” kept construction of the office space from commencing. In addition, the memo is pessimistic about the future of retail, even in specialty developments like Market and Main.
Among the three major submarkets in Southeastern New Hampshire, Manchester alone is burdened with a 16.04 percent vacancy rate among its 1.7 million square feet of class A office space in the second quarter of this year, according to research by Colliers International. Nashua’s 2.26 million square feet of class A space is 90.64 percent occupied, and Portsmouth’s 2.13 million square feet of class A space is 95.03 percent occupied. With layoffs at Oracle subsidiary Dyn, around 100,000 square feet of space is currently available in the city’s Millyard district, according to listings, part of a glut of 262,988 square feet of available class A space Colliers identified.
Modified gross rents in the Manchester submarket run $22.32 on average, Colliers found, compared to $19.87 in Nashua and $25.90 in Portsmouth.
Spurred on by the high demand for multifamily product in the state, Encore wants to build 290 apartments instead. The proposed new building program would see much of the retail and office space replaced by two L-shaped, 5-story apartment buildings with 61,510 square feet of ground-floor retail and a 6,500-square-foot single-story restaurant building at the end of a street which the two mirror image residential buildings would describe, according to documents filed with the town. Preliminary plans outlined in the memo state the unit mix would include 116 studios, 116 one-bedroom units and 58 two-bedroom units. Amenities have not yet been defined but would be “expansive” and would help the project market itself to a younger type of renter, and would potentially include features like a fitness center, dog washing station, a pool or concierge services.
“The apartment component is the desired vehicle to complete the project in a reasonable time frame,” Encore’s memo to the town stated, adding that the units would turn the project into a valuable “live-work-play environment” that would be able to directly support the project’s smaller retail component.
The proposal could face hurdles, however. The project will need approval from the town planning board for the changes, and the town must sign off on the project’s lack of covered parking. In addition, Bedford Fire Chief Scott Hunter wrote in a memo to the board that the proposal “generates concern” because the department has only one aging ladder truck, which he described as not being up to the task of handling rescues from a major fire in a large multifamily building.
The Bedford Planning Board is scheduled for a preliminary discussion of the proposal tonight.
