(To read more on the multifamily market, click here.)
QUINCY, MA-Long a fixture of urban living, lofts are moving out of the city and into the suburbs as developers look for ways to infuse new life into old commercial buildings. In industrial areas throughout the Bay State, hundreds of new lofts are being built in converted factories, among them a $200-million project in Lawrence that will turn a 1.3-million-sf mill building into New England's largest environmentally friendly residential development with 600 luxury condominiums and six floors of retail space.
Now, however, lofts developments are appearing in Boston's bedroom communities where single-family homes are more prevalent than large commercial tracts.
In Watertown, Quincy, Medford, Brookline and beyond, developers are selling the upscale loft lifestyle to buyers, often at prices that are half the cost of similar units in the city.
"A lot of people like the loft concept but aren't able to afford the prices lofts command in downtown neighborhoods," Richard Kimbal Greer, a principal with Boston-based Kimball Borgo, which specializes in loft sales, tells GlobeSt.com. "Developers are taking advantage of that to create more cost efficient projects" in the suburbs.
In Quincy, at least two loft projects are under construction and more are planned.
At Granite Lofts, the South Shore's largest loft project, developer Granite Lofts Condominium LLC, has turned the former Boston Gear factory on Quincy's Hancock Street into 109 units of loft housing. About 65% of those units are already sold out at prices ranging from $299,000 to $469,000, says Cheryl Troufield, a member of the project's sales team.
Just a few miles away, Touchstone Properties is revamping a former granite warehouse and machine shop into a six unit complex called the Penn Street lofts, half of which have sold at prices of $429,000 to $529,000, long before construction even is completed.
Meanwhile, of Quincy's Fore River Shipyard, developers are planning 140 loft-style units as part of a redevelopment project that will turn the former shipbuilding center into a mix of residential, commercial and retail uses. Brockton and Plymouth are also being eyed by loft developers.
Elizabeth Whitaker, a loft architect in Boston, tells GlobeSt.com that the trend in loft development should continue in the suburbs as builders look to reuse older commercial properties and loft-loving buyers search for more affordable units.
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