In first expansion across Main Street, Clark University plans new education center
By Sara Schweiger TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
Sunday, July 20, 2014
WORCESTER — You could call it one giant LEEP for Clark University.
In its first expansion across Main Street, the college is planning to build a $19 million, 35,000-square-foot Alumni and Student Engagement Center that will house its Liberal Education and Effective Practice Center. The project, across from the university's main gate at 950 Main St., will also include expanded parking, upgraded lighting, a plaza and green space.
Jack Foley, vice president for government and community affairs at Clark, described the project, which received Planning Board approval on July 16, as being an anchor project in coordination with others happening in Main South, including improvements at University Park and streetscaping planned for several blocks near the university.
http://www.telegram.com/article/2014...09919/0/SEARCH
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Worcester OKs CitySquare change
By Nick Kotsopoulos TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
Friday, June 27, 2014
WORCESTER — A building planned as the anchor for a CitySquare parcel will be located along Mercantile and Front streets rather than set back as previously proposed, according to an amendment to the site plan approved by the Planning Board.
Also, a park area will be created to the east of that building, running to where the yet-to-be-created Eaton Place would be located.
The parcel, known as Parcel F, is above the site of the proposed underground parking garage. The parcel is bounded by Front Street, Mercantile Street, the Unum building, the St. Vincent Cancer and Wellness Center and the East parking garage, and had been approved in 2005 for a multistory building. Those previously approved plans had called for the building to be set back from Mercantile Street, with a courtyard in front of it.
http://www.telegram.com/article/2014...79817/0/SEARCH
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Voke Lofts fulfills high hopes
Sunday, June 29, 2014
By Charlene Arsenault CORRESPONDENT
WORCESTER — Mary O'Malley joked that she would have loved to have had a state-of-the-art kitchen in her office when she was an assistant principal at Worcester Vocational High School. Now, a sleek kitchen is part of what was once her office unit in the new Voke Lofts, the 116,306-square-foot mixed-income residential building that is the former vocational school.
With a temporary license to open in hand, some residents have moved in, and 70 percent of the units are already leased. While the prices vary depending on the unit, Mr. Winn said, a one-bedroom apartment at market rate is roughly $1,200, and a unit with a den would run $1,600.
http://www.telegram.com/article/2014...99968/0/SEARCH
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Worcester skybridge project might resurface
By Nick Kotsopoulos TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
WORCESTER — Is the downtown skybridge project being revived?
City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr. says he cannot give a definitive answer one way or another. What he will say, though, is a qualified "maybe."
The so-called skybridge, now a vision, is an elevated pedestrian walkway that would connect the Hilton Garden Inn with the DCU Center and the municipal parking garage on Major Taylor Boulevard.
The project's design called for a glass-enclosed, elevated walkway — 274 feet long and 10 feet wide — connecting the third level of the 1,000-space parking garage, sloping gently down to the second floor of the 200-room Hilton Garden Inn across the street, and rising again to hook up with the second floor of the DCU Center.
The bridge was to be supported by 13 pairs of cables radiating from the top of a 150-foot pylon next to the hotel.
The original estimate, from when the project was first broached in 2003, pegged the cost of the skybridge at about $2.5 million.
But after publicly bidding the project three times, and with cuts in scope and value engineering, the lowest bids the city could get for the project came in at around $8 million.
http://www.telegram.com/article/2014...49875/0/SEARCH
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SpencerBank retaining wall at Elm Park raising concern
Thursday, July 10, 2014
By Nick Kotsopoulos and Alli Knothe TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
A 225-foot retaining wall is being built at the former Fire Alarm and Telegraph Building, which is being renovated for a bank. (T&G Staff/CHRISTINE PETERSON)
WORCESTER — Boston's Fenway Park is known for its "Big Green Monster" in left field, and Worcester's Elm Park now has what some people feel is a "Big White Monster."
The Worcester counterpart is a two-story, two-tier terraced concrete block retaining wall that has been constructed as part of the renovation of the historic former Fire Alarm and Telegraph Building at 230 Park Ave.
The 225-foot long retaining wall was built after part of the hill behind the Fire Alarm and Telegraph Building, which is being renovated into a bank, had to be excavated to make way for a 40-space parking lot. To keep the rest of the hill stable, two retaining walls have been built in a terraced fashion, giving the appearance of one giant wall.
http://www.telegram.com/article/2014...09522/0/SEARCH
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WRTA faces big price tag for site cleanup
QUINSIG AVE. PROPERTY NEEDS WORK
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
By Alli Knothe TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
A rendering of the planned WRTA garage and dispatch center.
WORCESTER — The Worcester Regional Transit Authority is anticipating a roughly $10 million price tag for a contractor to remove 45,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil before construction can move forward on a new dispatch center and garage on Quinsigamond Avenue.
That price is an estimate, said WRTA Administrator Stephen F. O'Neil, adding that the agency has yet to accept bids for the project. He said the site is in bad shape, with contaminated soil between 1 and 12 feet below the surface of just about the entire 11-acre lot.
"It's more than what we expected," he said after an Advisory Board's Building Committee meeting on Tuesday morning.
The authority will be issuing a final environmental report by early August and hopes to attract three or four credible bids by the end of the summer.
Last summer, contractors told the city council that the work could total up to $15 million.
The city has secured $2.1 million from the Massachusetts Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs as well as $14 million from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation that will go toward environmental cleanup and enhancements like solar panels.
He estimates that it will take four or five months for the environmental work to be completed. Actual construction will take about a year-and-a-half, Mr. O'Neil said, with the building slated to open in spring 2016.
The WRTA bought the property for $1.5 million from NStar last year. It had been home to a manufactured gas plant from 1870 to 1969.
http://www.telegram.com/article/2014...69851/0/SEARCH