3BR, mall view
Condos linked to retail promise taste of city, and no hassle
 "Nouvelle at Natick" will offer 215 condominiums connected directly to the Natick Collection. Kellie and Michael DuGally recently checked out their unit. (Erik Jacobs for the Boston Globe) |
NATICK - Michael DuGally and his wife, Kellie, searched for years for the right home. They bought a loft in Everett but decided the neighborhood was too gritty. Boston condos were too pricey. They thought about building a house - a 4,000-square-foot "palace," as Michael DuGally put it - but discarded the idea. Yards and bugs are not their thing.
Recently, they found a fit. At the mall.
The DuGallys are among the suburban pioneers snatching up units in "Nouvelle at Natick," a newly rising condominium complex where residents will be able to ride an elevator to a private hallway leading directly into the faux-birch-tree-lined atrium of the Natick Mall, recently expanded and renamed the Natick Collection. Their $1.6 million, 2,200-square-foot penthouse overlooking JCPenney, the DuGallys said, suits the lifestyle they want for themselves and their Chihuahua, Jasmine.
"You just don't see malls like this," said Kellie DuGally, 37, owner of an online sales company in Hudson, who plans to convert one of the penthouse's three bedrooms into a closet for her clothing and shoes. "It's like you're in a luxurious hotel."
"We're not about roughing it," said Michael DuGally, 39, a one-time Newt Gingrich aide who now owns a Hudson-based furniture company that produces office cubicles.
For some, living at the mall is a way of a having it all, and developers across the country increasingly are connecting condos to suburban retail developments, targeting buyers who want shopping and luxury but not the hassles and higher prices that usually go with living in the city.
Claiming to be the first in New England to attach to an existing mall, Nouvelle at Natick has 215 condominiums offering amenities favored by urbanites: 24-hour doormen; a dry-cleaning valet service; underground parking with key-card access; an onsite fitness center with a yoga and pilates studio; and a 1.2-acre roof garden with two putting greens. But residents also will have at their disposal the state's largest shopping mall - without having to set foot outdoors, residents will be able to go for a waxing at Nordstrom's eyebrow bar, have lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, or buy plasma TV at Sears.
Nouvelle at Natick's yellow and cream concrete buildings with zinc tiles rise next to Neiman Marcus on the site of a former Wonder Bread factory. The condo units, which are set to open next summer, will be appointed with marble baths, stainless steel kitchen appliances, steel-railed balconies, and prefinished hardwood flooring. On the sixth floor, "Club Nouvelle" will accommodate fireside gatherings in a library, or around a wine bar, baby grand piano, or wide-screen television.
While the Belvedere at the Prudential Center, a downtown Boston tower that also sits atop a mall, offers views of the Christian Science Center's reflecting pool and the city skyline, Nouvelle at Natick residents will have more suburban views, such as of Route 30, the Massachusetts Turnpike, and a strip of wetlands.
"This is a sophisticated, serene environment in which residents can be pampered," said Stephanie Loeber, a representative for the developer, General Growth Properties Inc. of Chicago, which has promoted the building as "fingertip-living," as in, having life's needs at your fingertips.
"It offers a level of comfort beyond comfortable," she said, "You have access to the most exclusive retailers in the world - with your Neiman and your Nordstrom. But all in a suburban setting."
The suburbs, according to Nouvelle at Natick's marketers, are places where traffic, parking woes, and other city hassles are practically nonexistent. And some buyers see in the mall development all the glitter that city living offers.
"I have lived in the Back Bay, and it was very collegiate, very busy and noisy. It just wasn't San Francisco," said Donna Niles, a director of creative services for a fragrance company in her 30s who once lived on the West Coast and is now is mulling the purchase of a Nouvelle at Natick unit. "I think living at the mall would have a little more of that feeling."
She also expects to find like-minded people.
"I am sick of Faneuil Hall and the bars there. I am buying Manolo Blahniks," she said, referring to a brand of shoes that costs hundreds of dollars. "I don't like beer being tossed on them. That's not my idea of fun anymore. And that's the part of Boston that's missing. It's nice for the college students and the twentysomethings. But for the thirtysomethings and fortysomethings it starts to get, like, where do you go? You want to hang out with a different caliber of people."
Social opportunity has lured others as well.
Alan Gould, 71, a realtor, and his wife, Adacie, 69, a homemaker, bought a Nouvelle at Natick condo after living in Florida for 21 years. Then they talked their 43-year-old bachelor son, Michael Gould, into buying a unit of his own, three stories above theirs.
"We convinced him that it's a great idea for meeting somebody," said Adacie Gould, "If he wants to go down to the bar and have a drink, it's there for him, and he doesn't have to go out."
Since they went on sale in late spring, 15 percent of Nouvelle at Natick's units have been sold, with prices ranging from $420,000 to $1.6 million, according to Jane Sheehy, director of residential sales. Developments mingling retail with residential have been embraced in the South, according to the International Council of Shopping Malls, and several projects are underway in Massachusetts, like The Loop in Northborough and Avalon Hingham Shipyard.
Already, residents-to-be at Nouvelle at Natick have connected with one another - at celebrations of the mall. Many attended a party sponsored by the Natick Collection to mark its expansion, and another by a mall restaurant.
"It was very, very nice," said Nancy Nelson, 62, of Marlborough, a kitchen designer who attended the parties after purchasing a Nouvelle unit that she says will be a sensible home as she ages because it offers an elevator and covered parking. The proximity of retail, she said, was not a prime attraction. But she still plans to make use of the mall.
"I look at it as an indoor place to walk in the winter," Nelson said.
The DuGallys see the mall more integrally.
"It's a little scary living above a mall," Kellie DuGally said. "I told Michael that he'd have to get a second job."
"We both love shopping," Michael DuGally said. "So why not live someplace where there is so much stuff accessible?"
He added, "It's like getting the Newbury Street experience, without having to fight for parking."
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