Polaroid Foreclosure Auction in Massachusetts Fails to Draw Bids
The future of a proposed $500 million development at the former Polaroid Corp. headquarters in Waltham remains murky after a foreclosure auction Friday failed to garner any acceptable bids on the property.
The auction was held by Helaba, the German bank that holds the first mortgage on the property. Helaba itself ended up buying the site with a bid of $42.5 million.The only other bidder was the real estate investment firm The Bulfinch Companies of Needham, which offered $26 million.
The 119-acre property, which fronts Route 128, was owned by Watch City Development LLC, a joint venture between Polaroid and The Related Companies of New York, which intends to build a 1.7 million-square-foot office and retail complex at the site. Polaroid declared bankruptcy last year, and now that Helaba has bought the site, it’s unclear whether Watch City will be able to work out a deal to proceed with the development.
Officials from Polaroid did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Related declined to comment, as did Barry Braunstein, a lawyer representing Heleba.
Waltham Mayor Jeannette McCarthy expressed relief that the property wasn’t scooped up by another developer. ‘‘I was pleased that the bank is the one that got it,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s not somebody completely new.’’
McCarthy said the site is ‘‘absolutely’’ important to Waltham, simply by virtue of its size. ‘‘It will have a major impact on the city no matter what goes in there,’’ she said.
Whoever develops the land, McCarthy said, should honor four commitments Watch City agreed to as part of the proposal: to make $45 million in traffic improvements, to preserve 20 acres of forest on the property, to convert a rail bed into a recreation trail, and to set aside part of the site for a potential direct connection to Route 128. She thinks the site can still be developed as planned at some point, despite the current weak real estate market, McCarthy said.
David Begelfer, CEO of the commercial real estate trade association NAIOP Massachusetts, agreed that the land could support a major development. ‘‘Someone may choose to scale it down and just get something started, but I think it does have the potential to be as large as originally planned,’’ Begelfer said. ‘‘The market will be coming back. When it does, properties like this will be the first to be developed.’’
Begelfer said Heleba may just let the property sit vacant for a couple of years until it can fetch a higher price. ‘‘There was a hope that someone could steal this property’’ with a low auction bid, Begelfer said. ‘‘Clearly, the bank was not going to allow the property to be stolen.’’
Inge Uhlir, who lives about a mile from the site, said neighbors are happy with the current plan and would fight any major changes. ‘‘If that’s ditched, there’s going to be a storm of opposition,’’ Uhlir said.
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