The Mathworks Expansion Up For Hearing June 25 | State grant to pay for new U-turn on Route 9 near company's Natick campus
The Mathworks' current campus in Natick.
The expansion project that MathWorks Inc. proposed to town officials at least 18 months ago is teetering on the brink of approval by the planning board.
The company wants to add 600 more workers to its Natick campus, which already employs about 1,300 workers at its Route 9 headquarters, by adding a four-story office building and a new parking garage.
An existing retail building on the property will be demolished to make way for the new building, should it receive approval soon by the Natick Planning Board. The project’s public hearing will continue on June 25.
Traffic Snarls
The maker of technical and design software plans to build 166,000-square-feet so it can remain in Natick, at 3 Apple Hill Drive, off Route 9.
“The project is still on the planning board’s agenda and it will be taken up again in the near future. The applicant is working hard to address issues,” according to Patrick Reffett, Natick’s community development director.
The biggest issues have been how to keep the additional traffic from impacting abutting residential neighborhoods and how the parcel will be initially landscaped and how that landscaping will be maintained, he said.
The state has approved a new U-turn about 1,200 feet from the intersection of Oak Street and Route 9, part of which will be paid for with a $1.3 million grant from the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development. It is a Massachusetts Opportunity Relocation and Expansion Jobs Capital program. The program provides infrastructure improvement grants to spur economic development and to help companies expand where they are or relocate.
The MathWorks will have to pay for the redesign and reconfiguration of that intersection and the creation of any additional lanes to help with traffic and synchronization of that traffic light with others on Route 9, Reffett said.
The attempt to get a new building and parking garage approved by the Planning Board began at least 18 months ago. The plan stalled as residential abutters brought forth concerns about traffic, landscaping, noise and aesthetics.
Traffic has been one of the biggest problems to solve, with residents wanting the town and the company to find a way to keep people from using Bacon and Walnut streets as a back way to Route 9 West.
Other traffic mitigation proposals that were not chosen due to cost or other concerns included an 800-foot, two-way tunnel under Route 9 so MathWorks workers could leave the property and head west on Route 9 without entering the nearby neighborhoods. A second called for a bridge over Route 9 for workers. Both were too expensive.
Residents also want the company to plant big enough shrubbery to shield the parking garage from the neighborhood, Reffett said.
As for the company’s perspective, David Smith, a spokesman for the company, said The Mathworks is “continually working with the town, state officials and residents to gain consensus.”
The MathWorks has been working diligently on the problems, trying to solve the issues to the satisfaction of town officials and residents, Reffett said. Congestion along Route 9 and the density of the population have stretched out the project as problems needed to be solved, he said.
The nature of the congestion along Route 9 and the density of the population have stretched out the project as problems are addressed, he said.
“They’ve been a great employer in Natick and they’d be a great company to have in any community,” Reffett said. n
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