Westwood Station ownership shakeup no longer a question of if, but when

While rumors of a potential shakeup in the ownership of Westwood Station have been swirling for months now, a newly issued statement from the town of Westwood, currently available on its website, appears to have erased all doubts in the matter.

According to the statement, which is two paragraphs in length, the project’s current owners and the mortgage holders on the property, identified in a recent Boston Business Journal report as Anglo Irish Bank, have “reached an agreement to allow new owners to acquire the project and proceed with the development.”

The statement goes on to say that “several prospective buyers have expressed interest and have undertaken various levels of due diligence over the summer months.” It further states that “bids are currently being accepted” and that a new owner is expected to be announced “within a few weeks.”

How these changes affect the project’s current ownership group, led by Boston developer Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, remains to be seen; however, it now appears almost certain that the proposed development — once touted to be many times the size of the South Shore Plaza — will be scaled back, and perhaps dramatically so.

According to the statement issued by the town of Westwood: “While a large, mixed-use development is still planned and permitted, changes/amendments to the existing permits are anticipated. Specifically, the first phase will not likely entail 2.6 million square feet of development [as originally planned].”

One estimate, mentioned in the BBJ report, has the first phase topping out at 700,000 square feet of development and consisting of only two retailers: a Target department store and a Wegmans supermarket.

Of course, that could all change once the new ownership team takes shape, or once the economy improves — or both.

Canton officials, meanwhile, remain unfazed by the recent reports, in part because they have been in continued discussions with both the existing and new developers and remain confident that the town’s interests will be protected one way or another.

As for the tentative deal they had reached back in March following a lengthy legal battle, Selectmen Chairman Victor Del Vecchio indicated earlier this week that the “basics of the agreement remain in place.”

The deal has CC&F agreeing to a number of major concessions, including the town’s two biggest wishes: road widening and bridge improvements on Dedham Street and the reimbursement of all legal fees incurred during the appeals process.

The real work, officials say, has been completed for some time now; however, there are a variety of technical details that still need to be ironed out — mostly between the state and the developer — and the addition of new ownership appears to have complicated the process somewhat.

“We await the developers’ response to further traffic analysis that our consultants and the state recently have requested of them,” Del Vecchio said. “The new developers have requested additional considerations from us and the state, and we have requested additional considerations from them as well.

“But the fundamentals of our agreement, to the best of our understanding, have not changed — the infrastructure improvements, the reimbursement of all legal fees and traffic expenses, a reduction in the size of the project, and the establishment of a traffic fund for future town uses.”

“We continue to negotiate with these guys; that’s the bottom line,” he said. “And there are no surprises here, none that we’re aware of.”

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Posted by Jay Turner on Sep 23 2010. Filed under Business, News. Both comments and pings are currently closed.