From traditional mall to martinis and microscopes, CambridgeSide is unveiling its new look - The Boston Globe (2024)

“Look, I grew up on all that stuff, and I get it,” he said. ”Everybody has kind of advanced their palettes and wants something different.”

And the shift from mall food court to modern food hall is part of a broader overhaul of CambridgeSide that aims to reflect a new East Cambridge that has emerged from the old factories and parkland the Galleria went up on 34 years ago, before the internet, before online shopping, before this became an epicenter of the global pharmaceutical industry.

Life sciences rule here now, and even before the food hall opens, CambridgeSide has been leaning into that.

On the corner of Land Boulevard, where a multistory Macy’s used to be, there’s now a 10-story office and lab building, 366,000 square feet, ready to go. On another corner, a former Sears has become 224,000 square feet of lab space. Inside the mall itself, the third floor has been emptied of retail and replaced with a 140,000-square-foot facility leased to SmartLabs, a kind of WeWork for life science startups.

All told, New England Development plans to add about 1.7 million square feet of lab and office space here in six interconnected buildings. There will be new, outward-facing, storefronts along First Street. And, of course, the food hall.

The firm declined to share financial details of the project, but documents filed in Middlesex County in 2022 indicate New England Development and its partners signed financing deals worth a combined $291 million for the overhaul of the Macy’s building and the third-floor space. A different developer who owns the former Sears building took out $232 million loan on it around the time construction started in late 2021.

They’re betting the end result — a mix of microscopes and martinis — will be a mall that still has about 400,000 square feet of retail, but will look more like the 21st-century neighborhood around it.

And those lab workers — sophisticated, younger, with money to spend — are expected to make up a good chunk of the new patrons at the food hall — dubbed CanalSide Food + Drink. Traditional office towers have for years tried to offer up cool amenities like gyms, entertainment, and interesting dining and drinking. But mixed-use, campus-style projects have only recently begun to come to life sciences.

“It’s a change in culture,” said Liz Berthelette, the Boston-based head of life science research at real estate brokerage Newmark. “Scientists weren’t seen as walking outside, and collaborating. But we’ve seen a shift in the culture, and a shift in the preferences. Roof decks, campus-style retail, those amenities are more important.”

And while many office workers are still lingering at home, at least part of the time, after COVID-era shutdowns most life science and lab workers never left — which can bring customers for lunch, after-work drinks, and errands at TJ Maxx.

CanalSide is set to open in mid-Autumn, and the old food stops are long gone as work goes full speed. A collection of local restaurants will have outposts there, with an airier feel and canal-side seating as the centerpiece.

That’s on trend of course, and a natural fit for the new neighborhood around CambridgeSide since Karp’s father’s team helped reimagine the worn-out industrial and parkland in this corner of East Cambridge.

“Indoor and outdoor space, that’s all the rage. You have to have outdoor space,” said Rob Robledo, executive vice president for Boston retail at brokerage CBRE.

Food and drink helps, too. He points new development in the Seaport — beer and bowling, noodles and darts — and Assembly Row in Somerville as successful mixed-use upgrades of older properties. And Robledo is one of a growing cadre of analysts who say the death of brick-and-mortar retail has been overplayed.

In March, researchers at Marcus & Millichap pegged Boston’s retail vacancy rate at just 2.9 percent, among the tightest in the country. New England Development declined to provide current occupancy at CambridgeSide, but there are a few noticeable vacancies at the mall.

Of course, New England Development is leaning into lab space just as demand for it has plunged. After a decade of frenzied construction, and redevelopment of traditional office space, there’s 43 million square feet of life science-oriented real estate in Greater Boston, by far the most of any market in the country. (The San Francisco Bay Area is second with 32 million, according to Newmark.)

The overbuilding, along with a startup slowdown and some notable layoffs at local life sciences firms has thrown the local lab space vacancy rate to nearly 25 percent in the first quarter — up from 5 percent in 2021.

Still, Berthelette, of Newmark, and others, aren’t panicky.

“We’re returning to normal, historical levels,” she said. “The long-term prospects for life science are great … and Boston is the epicenter. That Cambridge address still has cachet in the industry.”

The long-term prospects of life science are encouraging, and NED is betting on it.

But the CambrigeSide has been weathering dizzying changes for decades, he said, and they feel ready for what may come next.

“Look I hope those lab workers have breakfast, lunch and dinner at CanalSide, I do,” he said. " We’ve invested for the long term. The tenants may change. But we’ve created a canvas and the different colors are going to come in.”