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IBM to move into Lowell complex originally built for company that saw itself as an IBM killer
By adamg on Fri, 05/14/2021 - 3:07pm
The Boston Business Journal reports IBM will be consolidating its Massachusetts operations in rented space at CrossPoint in Lowell, a complex that originally opened in 1976 as the headquarters of Wang Laboratories, which, at its peak, had 33,000 employees.
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Fred the Baker briefly joined the battle.
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Comments
Memories
My dads office had all Wang computers .
I remember the guy from Wang who did repairs (or whatever)was a regular fixture at his office. I don't know if that was good or bad...lol
Cross point is gruesome
Every time I drive past those monoliths, I wonder what it must be like to work deep in the windowless interior; that feeling of your soul being sucked out of your body each morning as you arrive at work.
Why? Is Crosspoint thicker
Why? Is Crosspoint thicker than a typical office building? To me it looks like it has plenty of window access due to all the zigzags.
Salon
Long time ago my favorite hair stylist moved to a private salon inside Cross Point. Its not that bad, the building has been modernized.
And its not window-less.. its very 1970s office building with narrow windows.
What got me was the vast amount of parking near it. You'd think at some point a deck would have been put in so the lots could be redeveloped.
And location is top notch. If you live in Lowell or along Route 3, this is super easy to get to.
Not just Route 3
But also Route 495 which makes it an easy drive from just about anywhere in the Merrimack Valley or even west to Fitchburg or Worcester.
I've worked in plenty of big office buildings and most of the time, the rank-and-file are in the middle of the building away from the windows anyway; only managers get the privilege of being able to see out from windows.
IBM is in a bunch of former DEC buildings right now anyway -- and DEC also saw itself as an IBM killer. I think they're mostly in the former LKG campus in Littleton.
I think some of that parking area has been repurposed for retail/restaurants, but doing something like a mall is a challenge with both the Burlington and Pheasant Lane Malls being 10 miles away, plus the Mall at Rockingham Park being about 15 miles away. It's a crappy location for residential since it's stuck between Rt 3 and the Connectah.
Lots
There was some development of the lots. That whole area where Outback and the Showcase Cinema are used to be parking. It wasn't used by the workers in Wang Towers, because there weren't enough of them to need it. I used it to teach my wife to drive.
The group who bought the property after Wang folded sold off that area, and made several times the $525K they'd spent to buy the whole property. They made out like bandits, and 4 years later, some of them sold out. At that point, the property was assessed at $103M. I don't remember if that was before or after they sold off the parking lot.
The Showcase was the subject of a NIMBY lawsuit brought by the owners of the Rte3 Cinema, on Rte110, just the other side of Rte3. That dragged on for over a year, but they lost, and the Showcase was built. Rte3 Cinema folded, as expected, and that property was used to build a new Stop&Shop, replacing one in Chelmsford Center. That particular move never made any sense to me, because there was and is a Market Basket right across the street. The S&S is still there, though, so what do I know?
yes
After I posted my reply.. and went off to buy garden stuff.. I realized that I was wrong, some of the lots have been redeveloped. I do remember the showcase and the outback being there.
I guess I was thinking more office or high rise buildings. Not single story commercial.
No demand
Cross Point has never been fully occupied since Wang left. Office space is a glut in the area generally.
Parking lots
At its peak, Wang definitely used the entire parking lot area --all the way to the helipad, which was where the Showcase is now. I got in fairly late most days, and I would just head to the helipad area because there was so little chance of getting a space closer to the towers. Sometimes, there were only one or two spaces available, even back there. On days of the quarterly Wall Street analyst meeting or of annual worldwide sales manager meetings, security would rope off a big section of the lot nearest to the towers, and then there wasn't enough parking for all the regular employees so a bunch of us would have to drive to park in the lot for the "mini-towers" about a half mile away.
Bring your bike next time
At the end of the parking lot is the entrance to the Bruce Freeman trail. It will soon have its own bridge to cross Rt. 2 in Concord and is slated to run all the way from Lowell to Framingham.
Bike path entrance is very hard to find
Last time I was there, it was nearly impossible to find the bike path entrance without a lot of looking around. There were no signs or road markings pointing to it.
Tunnel
Apparently, the trail goes through a tunnel under Rte3. Here's a picture. There's a chain-link fence blocking the tunnel in the picture, because it was taken before the trail was built. I have seen the tunnel; it's not hard to spot.