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A Publication of The Warren Group THE CLOCK IS TICKING
Credit Training Programs Coming Back In Style
ORANGE LINE OPPORTUNITY
FIXING ANOTHER FLAWED GOVERNMENT CENTER
Faced With Looming Wave Of Retirements, Industry Groups Re-Up Education Efforts BY LAURA ALIX BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
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ust a few years ago, Sep Salimi felt a little aimless in his career. Armed with a fresh, new MBA, he had dabbled in investments, insurance and branch banking, but he realized that it was commercial lending that was really calling his name. He had just one problem: he wasn’t credit trained. But today, Salimi is a credit analyst with Cambridge Trust Co., a career move that he says was only possible because he hooked up with David Nicholson, Marlborough Savings Bank’s senior vice president of commercial lending. Seeing a need in the industry for more credit training programs, much like the one he benefitted from early in his career at Fleet, Nicholson was toying with the idea of teaching his own credit training course, and when he mentioned this to Salimi, Salimi
Malden Square Attracts Investors BY STEVE ADAMS BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF
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COMMERCIAL INTERESTS
Rendering courtesy of Stantec
he first thing that stood out to Sandi Silk was the transit numbers. Nearly 13,000 commuters hop on and off the MBTA’s Orange Line at Malden Center station daily. That’s virtually identical to the ridership at a nearby economic development success story: Somerville’s Davis Square. “There’s a lot of markers in Malden that suggest the time is right for transformation,” said Silk, a partner and vice president of development for Jefferson Apartment Group. Malden’s bustling transit hub is a big reason officials and developers think the downtown can be revived. The city is preparing to sell its city hall and the police station across the street to Jefferson Apartment Group to make way for a 3.4-acre mixed-use development including retail and hundreds of market-rate apartments. For decades, Malden has been trying to fix its urban planning mistakes of the 1970s. A series of land-use studies have pointed out the shortcomings of Malden Square – and its considerable potential. The monolithic city hall building presents a barrier to commuters who use the transit station, just a 12-minute ride to Boston’s Haymarket, and gives them little encouragement to linger. Next to city hall sits a
sprawling former Bank of New England operations center that looks transported from a 1970s office park. Boston-based Berkeley Investments acquired the 4-story, 314,176-square-foot building at 200 Exchange St. last month for $21.7 million. It hired Stantec to design a mixed-use repositioning project, including 15,000 square feet of street-facing shops and cafes. “Being 50 feet across the street from the fifth-busiest station on the Orange Line was the biggest thing for us,” said Elizabeth Mahoney, director of acquisitions for Berke-
Boston-based Berkeley Investments plans to reposition 200 Exchange St. in Malden as a mixed-use office and data center complex with ground-floor retail and restaurant space.
GXL Is Essential To Region’s Success Extension Should Be Built Despite Cost Overruns BY SCOTT VAN VOORHIS BANKER & TRADESMAN COLUMNIST
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CONTENTS Points ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 4
Residential �������������������������������������������������������������� 8
Classified Sections ������������������������������������������������� 13
By The Numbers ������������������������������������������������������� 6
Banking & Lending �������������������������������������������������� 9
Community Bank Heroes ��������������������������������������� B1
In Person ������������������������������������������������������������������ 7
Commercial & Industrial ���������������������������������������� 10
Records Section ������������������������������������������������������ C1
here is a fine line between talking tough and actually doing something catastrophically rash and stupid. And if the Baker Administration was to carry through on its threats to cancel the Green Line extension, make no mistake, it would be both catastrophic and stupid. In one fell swoop, it would undermine billions of dollars in potential new development, from Lechmere to Union Square in Somerville and College Avenue in Medford, rivaled only by the boom unleashed by the extension of the Red Line through Cambridge three decades ago. Yes, the MBTA’s hefty overrun on the Green Line extension is bad news, Continued on Page 3