By Bronislaus B. Kush TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
 

WORCESTER — The establishment of Quinsigamond Community College's new Health Care and Workforce Development Training Center in the former Telegram & Gazette newspaper plant on Franklin Street may be an economic boom to inner city merchants who cater to workers and other downtown visitors.

The center, when it fully opens in the fall of 2014, will bring about 580 health care students and 3,000 faculty members and staff to the Worcester Common area.

Those numbers don't include the hundreds of other students who will be taking advantage of adult basic education and job development programs that are expected to start up on Franklin Street in January of 2014.

City and state officials, who attended a program this morning at which it was formally announced that QCC's new downtown campus will be located at the old newspaper complex at 18 to 20 Franklin St., said that the expected influx of students and faculty will substantially boost the number of dollars brought into the downtown.

By Steven H. Foskett Jr. TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER --Quinsigamond Community College will lease the former Telegram & Gazette building on Franklin and Federal streets as it begins to expand downtown.

The Quinsigamond Community College board of trustees Wednesday night approved a lease agreement with New Garden Park, a nonprofit subsidiary of the Worcester Business Development Corp.

The 10-year lease is likely to be executed in the coming days by the state Division of Capital Asset Management. In a prepared statement, Carole Cornelison, DCAM commissioner, said the state agency was excited to announce the agreement. The agency ran the college's search for new space. It sought bids last spring and received 13 responses from 11 Worcester-area entities, including the WBDC.

By Steven H. Foskett Jr. TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER— Residents offered praise, ideas, suggestions and critiques at a community forum Wednesday night for the Theatre District master plan.

More than 100 people attended the forum at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts to get a look at — and a crack at — the master plan, which re-imagines the 30 downtown acres from the Hanover Theatre to the Worcester Public Library to the Mid-Town Mall to Main Street.

The plan, a joint effort by the city and the Worcester Business Development Corp., envisions the neighborhood as a vibrant district where, as Skip Smallridge from the design firm Crosby Schlessinger Smallridge put it, people will “live, work, study and play.”

By Richard Duckett TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
 

WORCESTER � An ambitious “Theatre District Master Plan” envisions a revitalized “18-hour” mixed-use neighborhood, “supporting a vibrant entertainment and cultural environment” that would be created in part by substantial renovations of existing space and buildings and even demolition and new construction in the downtown area.

The 82-page draft master plan prepared for the Worcester Business Development Corp., in association with the city’s Executive Office of Economic Development, has recently been released and is available online at www.worcesterma.gov. The city will hold a community meeting in January for public comment and the plan will be submitted to the City Council for its review.

Specific dates for meetings had not been announced as of last week. A round-table discussion about some of the plan’s proposals was held last month at The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts, 2 Southbridge St.