Woburn, MA - Cummings Park and West Cummings Park, the large Woburn office and research complex, has a new owner according to Dennis Clarke, president of Cummings Properties, LLC. Clarke said that Bill Cummings and his family this week gifted the entire 59-acre, office and research complex to Cummings Foundation, Inc. as part of a large-scale charitable donation of most of the family's real estate assets.

Located on both sides of Washington Street, just south of I-95 at Exit 36, the fully developed 11-building complex contains 1.5 million square feet. It was gradually developed and built up by Cummings over the last 30 years.

The current donation includes all of Cummings Park, West Cummings Park, and other Woburn buildings totaling 2 million square feet. Properties in Stoneham, Wakefield, Wilmington, Sudbury, Burlington, Medford and Somerville were part of an earlier, similar donation by the family.

The 2 million square foot Cummings Center in Beverly is not among the properties donated to the Foundation. Cummings Properties' chief financial officer, William Grant, said that a dozen other large buildings in North Woburn will also continue to be owned by the Cummings family.

"In total," Clarke said, "43 buildings have now been donated, 15 this week, adding up to an aggregate of approximately 3.9 million square feet currently in the Foundation's portfolio. For a true sense of the scale of the family's gifts, the Foundation's net worth jumped to more than $408 million with the latest donation," he added.

For more than three decades, Cummings Park and West Cummings Park have been mainstays of the Woburn commercial real estate market. Directly abutting the busy intersection of Interstate highways I-93 and I-95, the sprawling commercial campus houses a total of more than 260 business and professional entities.

At the advent of Cummings Park, in 1971, Washington Street was a quiet, two-lane roadway lined by dozens of aging greenhouses. Today, Washington Street is a hotbed of high technology, biotech, and service companies of all types. Cummings Parks' evolution stands as a microcosm of the larger economic trends in Woburn and Boston's north suburban commercial real estate market as a whole.

"Bill Cummings began developing Cummings Park in 1971, after the city of Woburn changed the area's zoning designation to encourage increased commercial development," Clarke noted. Cummings sequentially purchased parcels from a dozen prior owners to assemble the expansive site. Cummings Park increasingly became one of the north suburban market's premier addresses. Its unique combination of location, convenience, appearance, and affordability made it very desirable.

In the acquisition, development, and subsequent management of its developments, Cummings and his team at Cummings Properties, LLC focused upon designing, building, and marketing the most efficient, effective product for the business community. This earned them the reputation of being very active and hands-on, an approach that continues today.

Industry sources say that Cummings' niche over the years has been in serving more smaller-type tenant firms than many other developers are willing to accommodate. Woburn-based Cummings also tends to work hard at promoting intra-park services such as restaurants, banks, medical services, lawyers and accountants among its tenant mixes.

Cummings Properties reportedly employs 256 full-time employees, about three-quarters of whom are mechanics and trades workers of all types. According to Clarke, the firm's current staff represent a combined 1,800 years of service.

The Cummings family's donation is not expected to have any effect at all upon the local "taxability" of the donated real estate assets. All of the properties will continue to be fully taxable in Woburn and in each of the other host towns.

According to Clarke, the Foundation's commercial buildings last year generated $2,942,000 in local real estate tax revenue for the city of Woburn alone. All investment profits from the real estate will flow directly to Cummings Foundation and will be devoted solely to the advancement of the Foundation's charitable purposes.

Cummings Foundation is a 501(c)(3) private operating foundation, originally established in 1986 by William and Joyce Cummings. All Foundation funds must be devoted strictly to the advancement of its charitable, educational, scientific and literary purposes. Eleven trustees, four of whom are also employees of Cummings Properties or the Foundation, all serve on a volunteer basis.

Two of the Foundation's most important undertakings are the ownership and management of New Horizons at Choate, a not-for-profit assisted living community in Woburn, MA, and New Horizons at Marlborough, a not-for-profit 400-resident retirement community in Marlborough, MA.

The Foundation also sponsors the McKeown Scholarship Program in Woburn and seven other local communities where Cummings Properties has interests. Since 1997, more than $1 million has been awarded to local area students. Additionally, the Foundation contributed $1 million in July for a new building toward the North Shore YMCA in Beverly.

For many years, Cummings Foundation has enjoyed a close relationship with Tufts University, and Tufts' president, Lawrence S. Bacow, serves on the Foundation's board of trustees. Mr. Cummings and two of his children are Tufts graduates, and he is a trustee emeritus. The Foundation established an endowed chair in Entrepreneurship at Tufts in 1999, and is providing more than $4.5 million to the school during 2004.

The new 25,000 square foot complex includes a full gymnasium with a climbing wall, adventure elements, a computer lab, breakout rooms and a kitchen, as well as complete infant, toddler and pre-school facilities for 94 children in the child-care center. The "Y" estimates that its membership includes approximately 26,000 patrons on the North Shore, about 16,000 of whom currently use the Sterling Center.

After former Foundation trustee Douglas Stephens became seriously ill and then died in 2004, the YMCA Board voted to name the new building in his memory. The Douglass Stephens YMCA Teen Center was formally dedicated on October 28, 2004.

President Richard E. Wylie of Endicott noted that the Foundation's kick-off pledge of $100,000 was the first gift received to support a major expansion of the college's library. Endicott College had just purchased contents of the closed Bradford College library, and needed to move quickly to house the 65,000 volume collection. This was a classic opportunity for CFI to support the type of entrepreneurial activity that is often hard to find in the academic world.

In April 2003, the Foundation pledged $100,000 to help support and develop a service learning program at North Shore Community College. The program, as introduced by President Wayne E. Burton, will allow students to help improve students' respective communities while at the same time furthering their education.

James L. McKeown Memorial Interchange

The new Interstate 93 highway interchange in North Woburn was recently named in honor of Cummings Foundation’s late managing trustee, and Cummings Properties’ late president, James L. McKeown. Massachusetts Senate President Thomas Birmingham announced the naming of the interchange during a Woburn Business Association (WBA) Annual Meeting. It was an especially fitting gathering he chose, because McKeown himself was a former WBA president.

Mr. McKeown received a master’s degree in elementary school administration from University of Vermont. With teaching jobs very scarce, however, he soon joined Cummings Properties as his first and only full-time job after college, rising to become president of the Woburn-based firm in 1992. He was also the first alumnus of the Boys and Girls Club of Woburn ever to become a director, and later its president, too.

Winchester Community Music School is moving toward 10 years in its grand home at 407 Highland Avenue, Winchester. Once the estate home of actor/comedian Frank Fontaine, the now fully restored and enlarged Tudor building sits on three acres, just up the hill from the former Mystic Elementary School.

In 1997 Cummings Foundation spearheaded the project with the lead $500,000 gift to help purchase the property. That gift directly led to two additional $500,000 contributions, one from Mr. and Mrs. J.P. Barger, and the other from the late Sandra Rogers, all of Winchester, to jump start the $3.5 million fundraising campaign.

The school now enrolls more than 900 students of all ages, and from many communities. Information about course schedules and fees is available by visiting www.winchestermusic.org.

Supportive Living, Inc. calls its residents "survivors." They have endured a life-changing event and are ready to rebuild their lives.

Founded in 1991 by Carrol and Doug Stephens, the parents of a survivor of brain injury, Supportive Living, Inc. provides a home residential atmostphere and individualized support service to survivors who are capable of becoming more independent members of the community. Two existing homes are designed with the needs of survivors in mind... they feature 24-hour staff support and supervision, a barrier-free environment, access to a community social life, and ongoing life skills training.

Cummings Foundation was pleased, through New Horizons at Choate, to provide all land needed for the first Supportive Living home at 19 Warren Avenue, Woburn, MA. See www.SupportiveLivingInc.org.