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Maybe they're planning to clone Tom Brady
By adamg on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 12:42pm
The Attleboro Sun Chronicle reports the Kraft Group (as in Robert, not American Singles) wants to build a 1.6-million-square-foot biotech park on Rte. 1 across from Gillette Stadium.
Via Wade Roush.
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Comments
Great time to build!
Yes last I checked, it's a great time to build commercial real estate. The jobs are just DYING for sqft!
It's called thinking ahead
By the time this is actually permitted, built, and ready for occupancy, we should be out of this economic downturn.
My question is about transportation. Will the T have to run additional trains down the Foxboro track to serve this development, and won't that track need a lot of improvement in order to run regular trains instead of just football specials?
re: Thinking ahead
That's quite optimistic; I'd love to see the documentation about their timing hypothesis on the economic upswing. Since they can see the future, I'm sure a lot of investment managers would like to chat. :)
Cloning in Foxboro
I'd be happy if they could just clone their train station. It's absurd that you have these train cars dumping people off 100 feet shy of the platform because they can't fit two trains at the raised platform at the same time (but expect that the only time they need trains there it is two at a time).
Then, when you go to get off one of these cars, the ladder leaves you over 3 feet above the ground to jump down from onto loose gravel. Getting back on the train without any sort of step up for the first 3 feet is also insane.
A contractor with a truck of dirt, a Bobcat, and some cement could run the platform the entire length of the two trains and even during the season this could be going on in plenty of time before the next game.
Bass ackwards
Kathleen Powers wonders why the Krafts don't build their soccer field in Foxborough and their biotech park in Somerville, near MIT, rather than the other way around.
Simple answer
Lots of soccer fans in Somerville who would have to drive to Foxboro to see soccer. Meanwhile, there is lots of Biotech in Kendall Square already that people commute from the suburbs to get to.
Communities
The kind of people who would be working at said biotechs will get paid the kind of salary that would allow them to drive to Foxboro.
The kind of people who would be going to the most soccer games won't have the kind of disposable income to drive to Foxboro to watch a soccer game.
This is part of the reason that he even wants to put the Revs in a slightly smaller, closer-to-the-target-audience stadium in the first place. Look at the women's Boston Breakers (WUSA, now WPS). They played at BU and were almost turning a profit...the only team in the failed 2000-2003 WUSA league to even come close to doing so. Putting the Revs in the city will really boost attendance as opposed to leaving them out in Foxboro to carry on, even if in a smaller arena.