The redevelopment of the Riverside MBTA has taken so long that attorney Stephen Buchbinder, representing Mark Development, noted at a recent Land Use Committee meeting that he’s personally been working on it since 2009.

Now, Mark Development is asking for more changes to, as Principal and CEO Robert Korff told the committee, “simplify the project for today’s economic times.”

This follows a similar change approved for the Northland Development in Upper Falls, which guts the original plan for office space in favor of more apartments.

Is the office market really that bad? And what’s being done, or can be done, to fix it? A deeper look highlights the complexity in a commercial real estate market upended and forever changed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Evolution of a vision

There have been several versions of the project before the city over the years. The Board of Aldermen (the former title of the City Council) approved the zoning change from a public use to mixed-use development. The developer added the former Hotel Indigo site to the development plan in 2020, and the City Council approved a new special permit for 10 buildings with residential, office, hotel and retail space combined.

The next year, the City Council approved a change to the 2020 special permit to incorporate about 370,0000 square feet of lab space.

“That project was never constructed, that special permit was never exercised, and that zone change never went into effect,” Buchbinder said.

And then COVID-19 changed everything. A rise in remote working meant a drop in office space demand, and the inflation crisis was making construction projects costlier.

And so, we’re at Riverside 4.0, the fourth iteration of a property that sits undeveloped in what Buchbinder called a “nexus” of transportation: where the Massachusetts Turnpike meets I-95 at the end of the MBTA’s Green Line.

As Mark Development’s Korff noted, Riverside 4.0 brings the project down from 11.7 acres to 9.34 acres, with the MBTA retaining control over the eastern part of the parking lot (which contains 286 parking spots), “to simplify the project for today’s economic times.”

The changes from the 2021 permit to the new Riverside 4.0 plan include:

• A decrease in size from 1,025,000 gross square feet to 884,195 gross square feet.
• An increase in housing units from 550 to 750.
• A decrease in retail space, from 21,852 gross square feet to 20,130 gross square feet.
• A decrease in parking, from 2,172 spaces to 1,405 spaces, and that includes the 286 MBTA spots.
• The elimination of 369,812m gross square feet of office and lab space.

Mark Development isn’t alone.

In May, the City Council approved a special permit and zoning change to allow Northland Development to move ahead with a project—one that has been in the works since 2019—by replacing office space with more housing units.

In July, the City Council’s Zoning and Planning Committee met with Economic Development Director John Sisson to talk about the trends causing demand for office space to drop.

And the data shows a market with a complex story to tell. According to a report from Newmark, a large-scale commercial real estate consulting firm, Greater Boston recorded its 13^th consecutive quarter of rising office vacancy in the second quarter of 2025, but the rate of vacancy growth has slowed this year as well.

Net absorption, which measures the change in market vacancies by subtracting the number of total square feet of office real estate space from the number of total office space square feet leased in the same time period, reached a record of 22.3 percent in Greater Boston last quarter. But at the same time, the length of leases signed went up, hinting at confidence returning for some businesses.

Chart from Newmark shows patterns of demand for office space in Greater Boston over the past 20 years, upended by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Newmark Research Group

Size matters

It’s not as easy an explanation as some may think. Elizabeth Holmes, director of corporate services at R.W. Holmes Commercial Realty, said there’s nuance in the numbers.

And one factor is the size of a space and how it relates to the needs of potential tenants. Since companies started returning to work after the pandemic pause, company leaders have been reassessing how much space they actually need.

“There’s kind of this interesting post-pandemic dichotomy in the office market in the suburbs,” Holmes said. “If you talk to landlords who have a lot of small office space—under 5,000, under 3,000 square feet—they’re actually doing very, very well.”

Moderate-sized office buildings along Route 128 are still in demand, especially in Wellesley.

“If you need under 3,000 square feet in Wellesley right now, you are having a really hard time finding space,” she noted. “And some of our Newton landlords who have smaller spaces are having no trouble getting tenants to renew. They’re having no trouble filling empty space. Things are taking a little bit longer, but that’s more just uncertainty with the economy. In general, many of the office owners who have smaller-sized spaces are kind of content with how the market is going. They haven’t had to slash rent, and they haven’t had to sit on major vacancies.”

But bigger buildings bring a burden brought on by inflation and construction needs. And many office spaces with tens of thousands of square feet have remained empty.

“These typically need a lot of work done to the space to fit their needs, and construction prices are making it really difficult, in addition to the amount of rent decreases or free rent incentives, or other incentives you’re giving to these big users, because you have to do something to be competitive.”

With new commercial developments, the challenge is even greater. And what works for attracting smaller businesses won’t pencil out for the bigger ones.

“With these developers who want to do new projects coming in and building a 250,000-square-foot or 300,000-square-foot office building, when you’re building something of that size, you’re not going to cut it up into 2,000-square-foot pieces,” Holmes explained. “You’re looking for someone to take a whole floor, two floors, half a building, and there’s just not that demand there.”

When COVID-19 shuttered offices nationwide in 2020, companies had to adapt to a remote workforce, and they had to adapt quickly. In the months and years that followed, companies started trickling back into office spaces but not at a pace that suggested a return to pre-pandemic normal.

“In general, most companies have realized they don’t need as much space. “They’re realizing they can have a workforce that works remotely, or they can outsource those jobs to other locations where they can get someone who’s in North Carolina to do the work at cheaper salary. So those groups that might have had 50,000 square feet are downsizing to 20,000 or 30,000.”

And that creates more competition for those smaller office buildings Holmes said are still in demand.

Design for proposed mixed-use development at the Riverside MBTA station in Auburndale. Mark Development

Finding new purpose

Lloyd Mayweather once said, “A true champion can adapt to anything.”

Is that true for Newton’s real estate market? No one has a crystal ball to predict precisely how the commercial real estate will continue to evolve post-pandemic, but there are signs of trends.

Holmes maintains that there will always be a need for office space as many companies desire a physical location for collaboration. And some kinds of businesses, like doctors’ offices, have to do things in person.

But for now, there’s a lot of change that needs to happen to transition to a new normal after the market landscape has been altered so much and so quickly.

“I think, in general, we certainly have an oversupply of office space, so some of it is going to have to pivot to something else,” Holmes said.

One answer is found in medicine.

“In the short term, we’re seeing a handful more of our landlord clients pivot towards medical or quasi-medical space, especially with space near Newton-Wellesley Hospital,” Holmes said.

Anything hospital-related that doesn’t have to be done at a hospital—blood work, specialist offices, therapy, etc.—could be done at a small office building near the hospital. Holmes noted that she’s seen growth in mental health care offices as well.

“We’ve seen concierge doctors becoming a popular thing in some of the more wealthy communities, where you’ve got an on-call doctor all the time, which is super fascinating,” she said.

The Sun Life building in Wellesley, for example, went under dramatic change when Sun Life itself was downsized within the building and that left 100,000 square feet the landlord has been able to rent to personal physicians and other small health care businesses.

Finding new purpose for commercial real estate will take time and money as well as imagination.

There are ways to find opportunities. It just requires the landlord to be agile and the zoning to allow them to be agile,” Holmes said. “And there’s the capital piece of it too, because in some cases, these owners have mortgages. They bought it for a certain number, and the building’s not worth that anymore, and the banks aren’t letting them utilize the funds.”

And none of that includes the cost of operating a business.

“I think people are very quick to put a broad stroke on the office market in general, but it’s really about keying in on the haves and have-nots,” Holmes said. “There are offices with people  who are doing extremely well, and then there’s other folks who have these major vacancies. It’s just about finding ways to be creative and match market demand. It’s not all terrible, but it makes sense as a developer not to build more of the stuff that’s sitting.”

Members of the Zoning and Planning Committee have said they want to have more discussions in the coming months about the city’s perplexing office space situation and what can be done with zoning or planning to help forge a way to attract new businesses to the city.