When? When? When?

January 24, 2011 | 7:00 am ET Staff Reporter

Sam Park & Co is on track with the spec development of retail/office space at the former Polaroid HQ in Waltham; design nears completion and site prep will start in a year. That was good news for the NAIOP crowd gathered at the Westin Seaport on Thursday, a group hungry to hear about plans to move dirt.

We snapped the panel: HYM?s Tom O?Brien (who with capital partners took over the languishing $1.5B-plus North Point project), the moderator VHB?s Doug Landry, Sam Park and the host, NAIOP's David Begelfer. Sam paid $40M for the 120-acres (on Rt. 128) in June to Heleba Bank, which had foreclosed on Related Cos in '09. Sam, who has a private equity partner, scaled back from Related?s 2M SF to a plan for 1.3M SF of office and retail. He says Phase I will be 280k SF, mostly retail with some officespace. The design will be approved by summer, site prep will start Q1 ?12 and vertical construction early in ?13. He says the plan will work because the land cost was low, he's phasing construction, and he has access to ?patient? capital, rumored to include theDeMoulas family.

Tom, a former managing director of Tishman Speyer and director of the BRA, has a pretty flashy capital partner himself: Magic Johnson's Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund. Also in the deal is Atlas Capital Group. His team is planning to spend $1.5 to $2B over 15 years to develop North Point on 44 acres (mostly in East Cambridge) to build 5M SF including 2.2M SF of office/labs, around 2,400 housing units, and parking for 5,700 vehicles. Tom says his team is ?ready to build? since the previous developer completed substantial infrastructure work. He tells us the project will be winner because it's walking distance from MIT, MGH, and two T stops, and it will offer a campus setting that's rare for Cambridge. On the important question: When will constructionstart? The word is mum.

When? When? When?

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