By Josh Resnek
As the former Stop and Shop site disappears, preparations for hundreds of new apartment house units are moving ahead at full speed as this long lost quarter of the city is being remade into one of the most densely populated in the city.
For decades, the area where the Stop and Shop operated from Everett to Chelsea line wasteland.
Emptiness abound.
Not anymore.
A first major development completed last year brought more than 600 units. Another project brought hundreds more.
Now the Stop and Shop parcel is set for another 600-700 units.
Something like 1500 new units of upscale housing have been built or are being built in this area which once housed a trash transfer station and a bunch of empty, polluted lots of land.
The density of the new housing in this formerly empty space is a stunning example of how new development in Everett is giving shape and form to a future far different than anyone might have expected 25 years ago, ten years, even five years ago.
The Parkway, in other words, is giving birth to an enormous boom in the construction and the completion of upscale housing such as never experienced here in Everett, or in other cities like Revere and Malden bordering Everett.
Everett’s boom is larger than Revere Beach’s boom in construction and housing.
That is not to say Revere is building boom is tepid — it is not.
Revere is hot.
In and around Shirley Avenue and abutting the beach new construction has changed the face of that old avenue, once the home to a large Jewish community, cum Asian community, cum Generation X community.
Everett is hotter.
Revere’s boom on the beach, like Everett’s boom on the Parkway is largely absent of smaller commercial interests excepting for several new eating venues.
Everett’s boom doesn’t even have that.
All the new units in Everett off the Parkway are a kind of living community into itself.
But it’s a community needing a reason to exist.
Many new Everett residents use Uber, Uber eats, Lyft and such for their traveling and eating needs while paying up to $3,000 a month to live in these new units.
There is no reason to stay in these new units for resident’s now living there.
Turnover rates in these giant new developments are high.
People come and go to better themselves, to find a comfortable space and be able to shop or party in the evenings near their units.
Right now, such opportunities do not exist. These Parkway developments are magnificent.
But they need a reason to exist to keep their tenants from moving out.