(For more retail coverage, click GlobeSt.com/RETAIL and to read more on the multifamily market, click here.)
CAMBRIDGE, MA-Long known as the core of the Bay State's biotech industry, Cambridge's Kendall Square is fast becoming a hotspot for urban living now that a $95-million apartment complex has been completed as part of the city's master plan for the area.
The Watermark Residences, developed by Twining Properties, of New York City, is the first residential tower to go up in Kendall Square in at least a decade and the first residential project ever to incorporate artworks from Lincoln's DeCordova Museum into its design.
Alexander Twining, president and chief executive officer of Twining Properties, tells GlobeSt.com that the company partnered with the DeCordova under the museum's corporate loan program to place museum sculptures in each of the 23-story building's lobbies in a bid to combine art and architecture in the heart of the region's biotech center. "We really feel this will set a new standard for high end rentals in the Boston marketplace," says Twining.
But it's not just the artwork that makes this 375,000-sf tower at 350 Third St. stand out. The glass-walled property, which began marketing its more than 320 luxury units, including nine penthouses, to well-heeled Boston and Cambridge residents earlier this month, also features 25,000 sf of retail, restaurant and spa space, an outdoor sculpture terrace and a boat launch along with some of the most breathtaking views of the Charles River and the Boston skyline in the entire metropolitan area.
For Twining, placing the complex in the midst of Kendall Square's biotech corridor hardly seemed like much of a risk, even though the area is dominated by office buildings.
"Although Kendall Square is known for its offices, it has all kinds of conveniences that are just below the radar," he says, noting that the property sits just one block from the Red Line MBTA station and within close proximity to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. The city also plans to build a theater complex next door to the Watermark Residences, opening up the possibility that restaurants and other retail would follow. "We felt it was an up and coming neighborhood that would only get better with time," he says.
Twining is counting on that gentrification, not only to fill his Watermark tower, but to propel a second phase of the project. That will bring his firm's total investment in Kendall Square to $150 million.
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