Page 36 - BusinessWest June 17, 2024

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE >>
Architect’s renderings of the Clocktower Building and the Colonial Block (inset).
(Images courtesy of Pickard Chilton)
‘We Love Real Estate’
Developer for Clocktower Project Brings Impressive Track Record to Springfield
“One of the things that adds to a rebirth is, in some cases, retail, but in a lot of cases, it’s getting people to live back downtown, rather than working there, leaving there, and going back to their home in another part of town or one of the suburbs.”
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JUNE 24, 2024 << COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE >>
BusinessWest
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
[email protected]
hen Ed Woodbury was encouraged by close friend Tim Brangle, president of Chicago Consultants Studio, to closely consider the Clocktower Building project in Springfield, he immediately challenged him to back up
that request.
“He said, ‘Ed ... you should take a look at this,’” recalled
Woodbury, president of Chicago-based McCaffery Interests, which has a wide and deep portfolio of urban development and redevelopment projects, many of them clustered in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia, and the Windy City, and considers hundreds, if not thousands, of requests for proposals each year. “And I said, ‘why? Why do you think this is for us?’
“He spoke very highly of the city and its leadership, point- ed out the inherent attributes of the Basketball Hall of Fame and the casino, and then gave a brief history of how Spring-
field had turned the corner from previous down times, if you will,” Woodbury said of Brangle, who has consulted with Springfield officials on the design of the casino and econom- ic development surrounding it. “Naturally, none of that was familiar to us, so we looked at it, and the story happened to be true. And we liked that story.”
That’s a brief synopsis of how the Clocktower initiative, which involves three properties owned by the Springfield Redevelopment Authority — the Clocktower Building (113- 117 State St.), the Colonial Block (1139-1155 Main St.), and a smaller building on Stockbridge Street — came to be part of that impressive portfolio.
On the McCaffery website, the project is listed among others like in size and character, including 1600 Smallman, the historic renovation of a 1921 structure in the Strip Dis- trict of Pittsburgh into office spaces with views of the down- town skyline and the Allegheny River, and the Cork Factory project, an award-winning restoration and redevelopment of the Armstrong Cork Factory, also in Pittsburgh (more on that later).