By Josh Resnek
The new building taking shape and form at 600 Broadway is a monster of sorts – a substantial residential housing structure such as was not built here in decades before the great real estate boom began in earnest more than a decade ago.
This boom, now in high gear, is changing the face of the city for decades to come, quite likely forever.
Entire neighborhoods have been transformed.
Property owners all over the city are taking advantage of the boom to create new units on smaller spaces by building up and back on tighter lots.
Many homeowners living in their two and three family homes behind 600 Broadway, which stands at the high point on Broadway, have complained, and bitterly so, that the new structure will ruin their views, and creates a wall of sorts between them – the older structures on tree lined streets and Broadway.
It also casts shadows and overpowers the smaller structures adjacent to it.
However, there are many others who view the massive apartment building at 600 Broadway as the future, that the future is here and it is here now, and that Everett will be a better place because of new buildings like this one.
The 600 Apartment Complex now coming to completion is a ground up construction project including 85 residential units, a restaurant and commercial space with 37 parking spaces.
This location cannot be beat, says the public relations spin about the building by its owners, Volnay Capital.
“Steps away from public transportation and the Encore Casino, these apartments will provide residents with ease of exploring the incredible amenities that the city of Everett and surrounding neighborhoods has to offer. These luxury units will be built with high-end finishes and will all have access to a beautiful common area rooftop deck, the public relations hype reads.
Who will live at 600 Broadway?
A mix of younger people, mostly, without children, many of them without automobiles, but who have higher paying jobs and the vast majority of them who know very little about Everett other than its name.
The building’s mass, and its higher end amenities as well as rents – which will be market rate – is, again, the future of new housing in Everett.
Projects being built all over the city, primary among them the monster projects along a stretch of the Revere Beach Parkway, is the new Everett.
These projects are large – like the massive apartment project going on in and around the Stop and Shop, which is about to close – are spiffy, they are ultra modern, they are safe and they are expensive, all of which adds a panache to the older housing here.
Some critic claim the new residents who will live in these units will have nowhere to go but out of the city to enhance their private lives when they return to their units after a day of work.
There are very few commercial type developments rising with these new giants wherever they stand.
Maybe this will come later.
Right now, there is no reason for new residents to remain here. There are no stores for them to shop in, no clubs for them to congregate, and no reason to exist here except to have a place to go to sleep in.
With pools and amenities included, many of the new structures are self-contained, so going outside doesn’t tend to matter.
The newer properties have created a tenancy that tends to come and go rather than to stay.
New residents care nothing for the politics and intrigues of Everett City Hall.
New tenants don’t register and they don’t vote.
In the new nation forming all around us wherever we go throughout the land, it doesn’t seem to matter.
Everett looks more cosmopolitan with the new projects like 600 Broadway, and that’s what seems to matter to the administration.
The new look creates the image of a city on the move, growing and changing, taking on a new look and feel.
That’s the future.
It’s here right now.