It takes a village to raze Route 128 landmark
At first, woods, wetlands, and fields were spread across the outskirts of Boston. Then came Route 128, built in sections over 25 years and completed in 1959.
Campus-like business parks sprouted next to the arcing highway and became home to the high-technology companies that would transform the Massachusetts economy and make ``America's Technology Highway" one of the country's most famous beltways.
Last week, in one of those early business parks, a new phase in the evolution of Route 128 officially started. A giant excavator began dismantling the landmark
The spot where the automaker's 260,000-square-foot warehouse stood for more than 40 years is to be the center of the 4.5 - million - square-foot Westwood Station, a suburban village with 1,000 homes, an upscale shopping center, and 1.7 million square feet of offices.
``I think you will see this project will set a precedent for adaptive reuse on Route 128," said Jed Raymond, project manager for Cabot, Cabot & Forbes of New England, which is developing Westwood Station with National Development of Newton and Connecticut-based Commonfund Realty.
Douglas R. Wynne, president of the Neponset Valley Chamber of Commerce, said mixed-use projects like Westwood Station represent the next wave of development on the highway.
``Route 128 is not the information-based economy anymore," said Wynne. ``It's where the people who work in the information-based economy will be living and working and shopping."
The General Motors warehouse, which is slated to be gone completely in about two months, was long one of the largest and most visible buildings on Route 128. The automaker closed the warehouse last year, when it opened a new facility in Norton.
Nearly a dozen other buildings in the University Avenue park -- warehouses and offices -- also are scheduled to come down soon. The new development will be oriented to the Route 128 railroad station, which is a stop on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's commuter-rail system and Amtrak's East Coast network.
The shift from campus-style business park to mix of uses, including residential and retail, is starting to happen elsewhere on the highway.
To the north of the Westwood project, in Needham, Cabot, Cabot, & Forbes is planning approximately 350 apartments in New England Business Center, one of the oldest business parks on Route 128.
In Waltham, a developer is eyeing former Polaroid office and manufacturing facilities for an upscale shopping center.
Another upscale shopping center, called Legacy Place, is planned for the junction of Providence Highway and 128 in Dedham. That property now is mostly a parking lot for a National Amusements cinema and several smaller buildings.
The shift to mixed uses is due in part to changing attitudes of communities, according to Mark Roth, executive director at the Boston office of Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate firm based in New York.
``Towns and zoning boards are more forward thinking on zoning and mixing uses," said Roth. ``The architects of the world have thrown the new urbanism at us for so long, people finally are accepting it."
New urbanism advocates back-to-the-future development in areas that resemble traditional downtowns, where people can live, work, and shop in one place.
The southern stretch of Route 128 actually never conformed precisely to the high-tech development model that arose in the west and northwest suburbs. In the south and southwest suburbs, the highway has attracted more financial services, insurance firms, and banks, than computer companies.
University Avenue in Westwood was developed as a warehouse district. Goods arrived in the area by rail, then were shipped out by truck. As warehousing shifted outward to the Interstate 495 belt, some of the University Avenue properties were converted to offices, while others closed.
In recent years, the southern stretch of Route 128 has been attracting corporate headquarters, according to Sean Teague, executive vice president and principal of
The General Motors auto parts warehouse in Westwood was considered obsolete and undersized by auto industry standards. Not on the town's list of major employers, it employed fewer than 150 people. The automaker's new parts facility in Norton, located in Commerce Center Park at Exit 9 off I-495, is considerably larger at 404,000 square feet. It has the same layout and design of new parts centers that GM is building across the country. The facility employs 146 and serves the six New England states and New York.
Norton lured the company to the town with an approximately $2 million tax break over 20 years, while the state provided a $1 million grant for road improvements.
The town expects to receive $5.5 million in taxes from the facility over the same 20-year period.
Robert Preer can be reached at preer@globe.com. 
