Large store resurrects dying mall
Home Depot is boon for Parkway Plaza
The arrival of a national home improvement retailer is helping to breathe new life into a Chelsea shopping plaza that had been largely moribund for nearly a decade.
Parkway Plaza, on Revere Beach Parkway near the Revere line, was a busy retail area in the 1960s and early 1970s. But it had declined steadily in recent decades, as a movie theater, a Bradlees, a Stop & Shop, and a Burger King all departed.
Now, a 10-year effort by the city and the plaza owners to revitalize the 35-acre site adjacent to Mill Creek appears to be bearing fruit at last.
City officials and others gathered on June 8 to celebrate the opening of the
Officials say the arrival of the retailer is providing impetus to a larger redevelopment effort that will bring additional businesses and housing to the plaza.
The new activity is yielding other benefits for the city. Home Depot built a public walking path along Chelsea Creek, while the John M. Corcoran Co., which is developing the housing, donated a nearby acre of land to the city for a park.
``We are thrilled it's finally happening," city manager Jay Ash said of the plaza's redevelopment, which has been a longtime goal of his.
The once-thriving plaza had been a ghost town for almost a decade, Ash said.
``Now not only do we have new retailing life," he said, ``but the promise of the expansion and completion of the adjoining neighborhood, and a walkway network that will encourage passive recreation."
Ash said Home Depot's decision to locate in Chelsea ``is an affirmation of the continued resurgence that Chelsea is enjoying."
Yancey Casey, a spokesman for the Atlanta-based Home Depot, said of the Chelsea store: ``As with any location that we identify, we obviously see it as an area that is underserved." The company also ``typically likes to get in on the ground floor of any retail development of an economic boom in an area," he said.
The overall redevelopment is being undertaken by Eastern Development of Woburn, in partnership with the site's owner, Kelly Realty of Boston, Ash said.
In addition to the Home Depot, the first phase includes the recent opening of a new Dollar Tree store and the reopening in new space of Val's Floral Shop, one of several existing plaza businesses. By the end of the year, a Papa Gino's is set to open, and about a half dozen other retailers are close to committing to occupying space, Ash said.
The second phase calls for the housing, a 234-unit, high-end apartment building on Gillooly Road and Stockton Street. Corcoran, the Braintree-based developer that is building the apartments, has pledged to set aside 10 percent of the units at affordable rents.
Construction of the housing is expected to begin early this fall, according to Corcoran vice president Tom Albert, who said his company has an agreement to buy the nearly 4-acre site of the planned building. Corcoran will manage the apartments.
The third phase calls for additional businesses, including a
District 3 City Councilor Roseann Bongiovanni welcomed the project, which she said is being well received in the neighborhood.
``A lot of people are very excited about Home Depot" coming to the plaza, she said. ``And the whole area looks a lot nicer. It looks like a safer place."
As project director of the nonprofit Chelsea Green Space and Recreation Committee, Bongiovanni is also pleased with the environmental benefits of the development. The committee is part of the Chelsea Creek Action Group, which is working to restore Chelsea Creek, of which Mill Creek is a tributary.
Bongiovanni said the river walk built by Home Depot, which is about a quarter of a mile long and is directly accessible from the plaza, represents the first leg of what her group hopes to make a mile-long path along the creek.
The land donated by Corcoran will help her group realize its goal of creating more open space along the creek, Bongiovanni said. She said the commitment to affordable units in the apartment development is also a plus for the city.
Ash said redeveloping the plaza has taken a long time in part because of the site's history. The property was formerly used as a clay pit by a tile manufacturer, and as a city dump. Ash said that clay is difficult to build upon, and that methane gas produced by trash left behind from the dump must be ventilated.
Home Depot considered abandoning the project in early 2005 because of the costs associated with those conditions. Ash said the company had agreed to proceed with the project after the city provided it with a property tax break. Under the break, for 10 years the company will not have to pay taxes on 25 percent of the amount the property value increases because of its investment. With that also comes a state tax credit.
Ash said that as part of the tax agreement, the company went along with the inclusion of housing on the site. Ash said Home Depot has a right under its lease with the plaza owner to determine who occupies the plaza with it, and originally it had been reluctant to go along with housing.
