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Josh Levy
Josh Levy
Title: Co-founding principal, Waterstone Properties Group
Age: 37
Industry experience: 21 years
When Josh Levy co-founded Waterstone Properties Group in 2004, the Needham-based development company focused on pure retail investments. As changing shopping patterns have upended the real estate industry, Waterstone has shifted gears to mixed-use projects such as Rock Row in Westbrook, Maine. Waterstone acquired the 100-acre former rock quarry from a previous developer who had planned a Wal-Mart-anchored retail center, and is pursuing plans for a 1-million-square-foot mixed-use project anchored by Maine’s second Market Basket supermarket. In Boston’s Crosstown neighborhood, Waterstone is planning to submit development plans for Junction 58, a redevelopment of a 3.4-acre city block including a 484,000-square-foot tower with office, lab and medical space at Hampden Street and Melnea Cass Boulevard. Waterstone owns 63 properties in the eastern U.S.
Q: Given the changes in the industry, how do you evaluate what’s a good retail development site?
A: Back then and through the beginning of the recession, we would say we bought and developed retail centers, strip centers, community centers and commercial and medical properties. What’s evolved is we are creating communities, where we’re really engaging our guests to make sure we’re delivering a meaningful experience. Our real focus is on dwell time, and engagement on social media to drive traffic to the property. We do a lot of programming, literally hundreds of events per year, everything from outdoor movie nights to mom and dad stroller races.
Q: When did you acquire the Rock Row property?
A: We purchased that this past November. Another development group had permitted a 530,000-square-foot Wal-Mart-anchored strip center. What attracted us to it was 100 acres on Route 95 with two exits dumping into the property. All of the feeder roads converge at this location. We worked with Wal-Mart to terminate the lease agreement and bring in Market Basket, which we feel is a wonderful addition to the community. We went to 15 cities on a tour to find out what worked and what we could bring back to this project in a mixed-use environment.
More importantly, we spent the last year spending an endless amount of time in the community, forming over 36 local partnerships. What’s emerged is the need for a much more mixed-use project that satisfies the huge demand for housing as people get priced off the peninsula. Nobody’s really created that outdoor lifestyle community. You’ve got the Maine Mall, which is a great draw, but it’s 50 years old. Given this project and where we want to take it, both we and Wal-Mart recognized that a neighborhood grocery store is the best fit. They are estimating 40,000 weekly shoppers. They are 80,000 square feet, and phase one is 155,000 square feet.
We are working right now on permitting of an 8,200-capacity live concert venue that will open next Memorial Day weekend. We’ll be announcing a 12-screen movie theater operator shortly, and a chef-driven restaurant. We’ll have two hotels, 400,00 square feet of office space, and we are about to announce a large outdoor recreational retailer.
We just announced Colicchio Consulting will be curating a 25,000-square-foot brewery and food hall. The city has been phenomenal to work with and we’re estimating Rock Row will generate over 3,000 full- and part-time jobs.
Q: What fills the role of an anchor tenant?
A: In addition to Market Basket, we’ll announce a large outdoor retailer and the movie theater and the food hall. Beyond that, it’s shifted from pure retail play to clusters of chef-driven restaurants, boutique fitness and experiential tenants. The Portland area has half a million residents year-round and 36 million visitors a year, so there’s a real opportunity.
Q: What are your future acquisition plans?
A: We look at both redevelopment and new developments, wherever there’s a community that’s underserved by retail. We’re careful not to just take a plan and say, “Here’s office, here’s retail, here’s residential, here’s mixed-use.” It’s finding out what’s needed from a community and reverse engineering from that. There’s a huge demand for residential.
Levy’s Five Favorite Boston Celtics Players:
- Larry Bird
- Robert Parish
- Larry Bird
- Kevin McHale
- Larry Bird
