Davenport Companies/MGM Springfield

When helping MGM Springfield create its vision for an urban casino, Form + Place explored the project’s role in defining a new entertainment district for the city. This included understanding its relationship to Main Street and the series of ground floor uses surrounding the mixed-use gaming and entertainment venue.

Main Street is downtown Springfield’s commercial backbone. The corridor links important cultural, civic and economic pillars of the community, which required MGM Springfield to be strategic in how it engaged with the existing spaces. From a placemaking perspective, understanding the variety of urban pocket parks, sidewalk environments and building common area is critical to developing an approach to creating an integrated district.

Springfield has a hierarchy of urban spaces that have the potential to support a range of active and passive uses. Downtown is characterized by a mix of historic properties, modern high-rises and remnants of Springfield’s industrial past. This includes a Main Street corridor populated with low- and mid-rise brick buildings with ground-floor retail that in many locations lack a continuity of storefronts. New development can play an important role in infilling these gaps.

MGM and their partners focused on creating an active street-level experience, featuring restaurants, coffee shops and retail that complement existing locally-owned commercial space.

Adjacent to the casino, Form + Place produced planning studies for Davenport Square, a mixed-use project with outdoor dining, retail, medical office and daycare facilities. This infill project occupies the city block across from MGM’s outdoor plaza and will further encourage pedestrian activity along Main Street by revitalizing a section of the city that was impacted by a tornado in 2011.

MGM Springfield

Form + Place collaborated closely with Davenport Companies and MGM to design the retail/restaurant/entertainment component of the MGM Springfield casino project. Our recommendation to turn leasing “outward” to engage Main Street in Springfield, combined with studies of the outdoor shopping and entertainment environment, was key to the revitalization efforts in downtown Springfield. Form + Place has played a role in designing numerous outparcels along the Main Street corridor and worked on several concepts for reconnecting the site to the Connecticut Riverfront. Form + Place has done studies for many of MGM’s Las Vegas casinos as well, exploring the role of retail as a means to engage the “strip.”

The Wilder Campanies

Wilder Companies is redeveloping Westford Valley Marketplace for UBS as a grocery-anchored experiential-focused retail center. Like many centers of its vintage, Westford Valley has a covered arcade running along the front of the in-line lease spaces. This type of arcade, while originally conceived of as protection from the weather, tends to obscure retailer identity and deaden the shopping experience. To breath new life into the project, Form + Place has been retained by Wilder to introduce architectural variety into the arcade facade. Drawing on traditional New England references, a language of facade motifs gathers retailers into groups and breaks down the monotonous face of the existing arcade. 

Likewise the existing plantings in front of the arcade will be replaced with decorative pavers, more appropriate seasonal plantings, lighting, benches, and other sidewalk furniture to create an enjoyable shopping and strolling experience.

Crosspoint Associates and Finard Properties

Strip malls and stand-alone commercial projects struggling to redefine themselves in today’s retailing world need to be thinking about placemaking and diversifying the tenant types that draw patrons to the center. Now under construction, 9/27 Exchange in Natick, MA, is being repositioned by Finard Properties and Crosspoint Associates, and is a great example of combining placemaking and a creative leasing strategy to keep the center relevant in today’s market.

The architectural upgrades are focused on creating tenant distinction, diversifying building materials and improving the synergies of the daily shopping, dining and working experience. To accomplish these goals the design team had to overcome significant challenges in the existing building. The slab height in the old Building 19 space had to be lowered to create comfortable, easy at-grade access. The exterior wall of the Building 19 is essentially a solid block wall that will be opened up with new tenant storefronts. A new palette of materials - cultured stone, architectural stucco, metal panel accents and PVC trim - and a variety of façade types will emphasize individual tenant identity. Varying parapet heights and cornice details will further distinguish one tenant from another, while taking care to not exaccerbate snow loads at the roof edges.

KGI Properties

It is rare to find a developable 55-acre site in the heart of an historic New England town. Working with KGI Properties and The Congress Group, this new town center for Wayland involved an extensive entitlements process that included the crafting of a new Mixed-Use Overlay District with associated design guidelines and development regulations. The resulting mixed-use development master plan, anchored by a new Stop & Shop and BSC, provided an appropriately scaled public realm complete with active streetscapes, a new town “green” and a trail network linking to the nearby Sudbury River. Parking was accommodated on-street and in a series of small lots connected by pedestrian mews.

Saxon Partners

This 200,000 sf retail village sits at the nexus of routes 3 and 44 on the south eastern Massachusetts coast. In contrast to the larger retail formats of Colony Place, The Village puts critical emphasis on individual architectural identity for each small retailer through the use of prototype material palettes deployed in a diverse but unified architectural language. Common building elements such as cornices, piers, lighting, awning types and towers are carefully integrated in the design and coordinated through tenant criteria guidelines.

High Rock Development

Form + Place teamed with High Rock Development to envision and develop the character of their new retail buildings at Cranberry Crescent in Plymouth, MA.  Complimentary yet varied materials and architectural styles were employed to create a vibrant center that meets the needs of a diverse tenant line up.

CBL & Associates Properties

This 600,000 sf retail center was conceived of as a mix of traditional big box anchors supporting a double wide Main Street life style center. The specific topography and storm water drainage requirements created the opportunity for a restaurant row and theater concept, sited along a new pond. These amenities further enhance the heart of the Main Street section of the project. Careful attention to street and sidewalk proportions was critical in facilitating a fully walkable shopping experience.  Project Completed at Carter & Burgess.