West End Yards Mixed-Use Development, Portsmouth, NH
After success redeveloping several properties in and around Portsmouth, Torrington Properties assembled a number of parcels, totaling 12.2 Acres, between Route 1 Bypass and Bartlett Street. Other developers had tried to redevelop this area in the past, but none were successful. Starting in 2018, Torrington Properties began working with August Consulting, PLLC, Fuss & O’Neill, and PCA to reimagine the depressed underutilized commercial/light industrial land. Early in the process, it was realized that to succeed Torrington Properties would need to partner with the City of Portsmouth. After entering into a Public Private Partnership (P3) with the City of Portsmouth, Torrington Properties was able to realize its goal of redeveloping the 12.2 Acres into a vibrant addition to Portsmouth’s West End neighborhood while allowing the City to achieve some long-held goals for the underutilized area.
Torrington and its partners were able to redevelop the site with 250 much-needed apartments, 40,000-sf+ of commercial space and 23 townhomes. The City was able to create commercial connection to Route 1 Bypass for the West End, removing commercial truck traffic from the roads in the residential neighborhood north of the project area. The project also reconfigured the intersection of Cate Street and Bartlett Street (a notorious traffic conundrum in the City), improved the buffer area to Hodgson Brook (an impaired stream leading to Mill Pond and the Bay beyond), and created the first leg of the Seacoast Greenway Rail Trail between Bartlett Street and Route 1 Bypass. The greenway will ultimately span between Vaughn Street in the heart of Downtown Portsmouth to the Massachusetts Border. During the design process, the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) required improvements to Route 1 Bypass including turn lane additions and intersection traffic light improvements at Route 1 Bypass, Borthwick Avenue, and Hodgdon Way, the new extension of Cate Street, as well as improvements at the intersection with Route 1 Bypass, Cottage, and Coakley Streets. Through collaboration from all parties involved, an underperforming area of Portsmouth was able to be revitalized while creating traffic and transportation improvements, vast stormwater control and treatment upgrades near an impaired waterbody, and the first section of a much greater public trail system. This project could not have been completed without the support and expertise of all of our project partners, including Cate Street Development, LLC (Torrington Properties and Dolben Company), August Consulting, PLLC, Bosen Associates, PCA, Harriman Associates, Stephen G. Pernaw Associates, Doucet Survey, LLC, McPhail Associates, S.W. Cole Engineering, Eckman Construction, Severino Trucking Co., Inc., the New Hampshire Department of Transportation, and the City of Portsmouth.