04-03-2025
State offers up Woburn regional transportation hub as new development option
Other development activities nearby include the rezoning of 53 acres east of the rail line, to allow for multifamily construction in compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, the start of construction of a 425-unit multifamily project northwest of the transit hub, and permits issued for a 250-unit multifamily project north of the hub and a mixed-use project just to the west of it.
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One of the biggest challenges, though, will be dealing with the property's contamination and its legacy as a Superfund site (a federal designation that identifies highly polluted properties). Industrial operations at the property, part of what was once known as the Industri-plex site, contaminated the nearby Aberjona River as well as adjacent wetlands and the Mystic Lakes over the course of more than a century, through the 1960s. The transit agencies, in developing the Anderson center more than 20 years ago, built 25 acres of parking and a subsurface 'geotextile' barrier to help contain the underground pollution.
For a developer to proceed with residential construction, the transit agencies said, it would need to work with federal and state environmental regulators to reevaluate the residential restriction.
The transit hub is named after Jimmy Anderson, a child who died at the age of 12 from leukemia and whose case was made famous in the book and the movie, 'A Civil Action,' about groundwater pollution in Woburn.
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Jon Chesto can be reached at
