In a column in today’s Boston Globe, Paul McMorrow, offers a perspective of  the proposed 40B project at 135 Wells Ave. I believe too many aldermen failed to see when they rejected the proposal earlier this fall.

And that is this was a very different project from all the other 40Bs and “is as much about what suburbs will look like in the future as it is about building necessary affordable housing.”

Be sure and read the whole thing but here’s two excerpts..

The Wells Avenue park hasn’t seen any new office construction in decades, and the offices that are there rent for less today than they did a decade ago, in real dollars. The logical solution is to shed the vibe of a fading 1960s-vintage corporate park, and create an environment that’s attractive to younger workers.

….But a massive generational shift away from suburban subdivisions and back toward urban living has left the owners of these legacy parks scrambling to adapt. In Marlboro, Burlington, and Medford, landlords are infusing new life into tired suburban parks by building new housing, hotel rooms, and retail space alongside old-line commercial space. In Needham and Cambridge, Cabot, Cabot & Forbes has spearheaded large-scale housing developments in the types of office and industrial subdivisions the firm pioneered a half-century ago.

This push to retrofit outdated corporate parks and make them more urban recognizes the changing dynamics driving the Massachusetts economy…