Downtown Framingham TOD Study

Framingham, MA

The City of Framingham, a western suburb of Boston, was not seeing investment in its Downtown in line with what was being seen in other MetroWest cities and towns.  RKG Associates was part of a team, led by RKG's Eric Halvorsen, charged with figuring out why. Framingham's residents and business owners were all interested in boosting the appeal and marketability of Downtown, but could not understand why the city was still struggling to draw investment.

To answer the challenging question of “what will bring investment to Downtown Framingham?”, the Team analyzed several clusters of parcels in strategic downtown locations. For each, RKG ran build-out and financial feasibility studies to determine what kind of development would be needed to make a project attractive to an investor or developer. These conditions were then compared with existing zoning
regulations, and RKG proposed several zoning modifications that would reduce regulatory barriers and set the table for future development.

The zoning that was crafted for Framingham’s Central Business District was nearly unanimously adopted at Town Meeting (the City was then a Town), and led to the approval of two substantial mixed-use and multi-family developments in Downtown. These projects aim to be catalytic drivers of additional investment, and to help prove that Downtown Framingham is a place in which to live, work, and invest.