WEYMOUTH, MA-One of the last puzzle pieces in a long-aborning redevelopment of the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station here fell into place Thursday as master developer LNR Property LLC closed on the purchase of the final 830 acres of land from the US Navy. An LNR spokesman confirms that the parcel sold for $25 million; the $2.5-billion project that’s under way at the long-shuttered air station, SouthField, will eventually encompass 2,855 housing units and two million square feet of commercial and retail space.
GlobeSt.com reported in August 2006 that the South Shore Tri-Town Development Corp., which is overseeing the former Navy base’s redevelopment, had transferred 549 acres at the 1,440-acre base to LNR. In the five years since, the Miami Beach, FL-based developer has had to overcome the hurdles of a cratered housing market along with bureaucratic snags in getting control of the property.
“For LNR, it has been nine years in the making,” company VP Kevin Chase, who’s spearheading the project, said in a statement last month when the deal for the 830 acres was forged. The air station 12 miles southeast of Boston was mothballed in 1997; the sale of the remaining 830 acres hinged on the Navy agreeing to perform environmental cleanup on the site.
In a statement issued Thursday, Chase credits the administration of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as well as the commonwealth’s Congressional delegation with helping to move the project forward. When the deal was announced in November, Patrick’s economic development chief, Gregory Bialecki, told the Boston Globe that the agreement would “pull a lot of people off the sidelines and convince them it’s safe to invest” in the project.
Construction on SouthField, intended as a transit-oriented, smart-growth development, is already in progress. The project’s first residential component, SouthField Highlands, will contain a mix of single-family and multifamily housing units that will come to market over the next two years. It’s within walking distance of the existing South Weymouth MBTA commuter rail station.
The Patrick administration has invested $45 million to construct the East-West Parkway connecting Routes 3 and 18 on either side of the development, while the federal government is kicking in $8 million for additional transit improvements to SouthField. Included in the 1,440-acre site will be 1,000 acres of parks and open space.
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
