By Grant Welker - City officials in Medford have chosen a Boston developer to work with on turning two surface parking lots in Medford Square into a mixed-use site slated to include a grocery store, 283 apartments and a cafe.
The developer is Transom Real Estate, the firm behind the 212 Stuart residential tower in Bay Village and others in South Boston, East Boston, Fenway, South End, Roxbury and Framingham. The firm was chosen through a request for proposals from the city.
The project is eyed for three city-owned surface parking lots just south of Medford City Hall, and it comes eight years after a master plan for Medford Square highlighted a desire for mixed-use development and a better use of its real estate.
The city administration announced the deal with Transom on Friday, with Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn describing the partnership as a “starting point” for determining in more detail what the development should include.
“There is work to be done before shovels hit the ground and the community will be involved every step of the way,” she said.
The nearest full-scale grocery store from Medford Square today is more than a mile, either a Wegmans to the east or a Whole Foods Market to the west, both also in Medford. The project’s grocery store is proposed at 13,500 square feet, smaller than most full grocery stores.
Though Medford Square has areas lined with streetside retail uses, including a Modern Pastry Shop, much of it is in single-story buildings. The neighborhood’s master plan said the commercial zoning that covers most of the neighborhood puts “too many limitations on the scale and density of buildings” and limits investment.
Preliminary plans from Transom Real Estate show mixed-use buildings rising seven and four stories. There would also be a four-level parking garage to supply parking spaces for the developmen’s own use, as well as municipal parking the project replaces.
The development is slated to take place immediately to the west of buildings well-known to regular passerby on I-93: the Riverside Towers senior housing development, the Saltonstall Building, and a Hyatt Place hotel.
Transom Real Estate’s proposed start of construction is the second half of next year, with an opening in the third quarter of 2028.