Photo | Grant Welker
Polar Park can be seen in the background from Lamartine Street, where work has begun to renovate a Gulf gas station and convenience store.
April 12, 2021
Trio of Canal District businessmen buy three sites for $1.8M
Photo | Grant Welker
7 and 13 Lamartine St. in Worcester
Photo | Grant Welker
30 Millbury St. in Worcester
Photo | Grant Welker
156 Washington St. in Worcester
By Grant Welker
A trio of Worcester businessmen that have sought to create more parking opportunities in the city's Canal District have bought three more small parcels of land.
An entity registered to businessmen Allen Fletcher, Dino Lorusso and Edward Murphy paid $1.75 million to buy three sites that each contain buildings today and are not planned to be knocked down for parking, according to Fletcher. The deal, which closed March 18, comes weeks before Polar Park opens for Worcester Red Sox baseball games and as the neighborhood is eyed for further potential development.
The properties they bought are 30 Millbury St., a former Advance Auto Parts; 7 Lamartine St., home to Golden Tandoori Bakery; and 13 Lamartine St., a PPG Paints store. The sites total just over 1 acre and were sold by an entity registered to Jon Stockel of Armonk, N.Y. The Lamartine Street sites are adjacent to one another and contiguous with another site the trio owns.
"We’re victims of our own popularity," Fletcher said Monday of needing more parking in the neighborhood.
Fletcher, the owner and developer of the Worcester Public Market, Lorusso, the owner of the adjacent Crompton Place, and Murphy, the president of 7 Hills Property Management, each have a stake in helping the neighborhood maintain parking opportunities. They bought 1.4 acres of land from the manufacturer Wyman-Gordon in 2019 to provide their customers and tenants with parking, and created a shuttle bus to help people better access parking. The shuttle has temporarily stopped because of the coronavirus pandemic but is slated to restart soon, Fletcher said.
In all, the businessmen now own seven parcels, including those they already bought: 182 Harding St., 9 Langdon St., 156 Washington St. and 172 Washington St.
“I don’t have any parking here. This building sits on a postage stamp,” Lorusso said after the 2019 purchases of his Crompton Place building. “We needed to do something.”
Parking opportunities are far fewer in the neighborhood.
Crompton Place visitors, for example, used to park at a dirt lot where the Worcester Public Market opened in early 2020 with first-floor retail and food tenants and upper-floor apartments. Parking was moved a block or so away, but that lot itself was eliminated when Polar Park was built. Murphy's offices are also on Kelley Square, and his firms own some apartments in the neighborhood.
A parking garage with space for more than 500 cars was supposed to open this spring across Madison Street from Polar Park, but that work has been delayed. The larger mixed-use development the parking garage is slated to be a part of was also supposed to open this spring in tandem with the ballpark, but that work is still in the early stages.
A few other proposed uses on the horizon could further stretch the supply of parking.
The developer and investor Boston Capital has proposed new apartments at the Table Talk Pies factory in Kelley Square for once the company moves those operations to a new site now nearing completion. The two sides have a sale agreement that hasn't yet closed. Another firm, Churchill James, has proposed a bowling alley and apartments on the Green Street site of the former Cove Music Hall.
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