Issues

The former city hall/police station site at 200 Pleasant Street had long been perceived as having a negative impact because it made Pleasant Street a dead-end and the downtown virtually invisible from the Malden Center MBTA station. In 2014, the City sold its City Hall Building and adjacent Police Station located at 200 Pleasant to a private developer who demolished and redeveloped it into a transit-oriented site with mixed-use development. Through the efforts of Mayor Gary Christenson, his extraordinary team and the City Council, the site of the former 200 Pleasant Street building is now a thriving hub that also includes a brand new, beautifully designed City Hall building.

History was also made with the 2020 re-opening of Pleasant Street to through traffic after being made a dead-end in the 1970s with the construction of the Malden Government Center Building. The herculean project included many working parts such as constructing a new police station, finding suitable space for city employees, then moving them into temporary buildings along with the demolition of buildings and several years of construction.

The City Council voted unanimously to authorize $12.5 million in bonding for the acquisition of land and construction of a new police station and to purchase a condominium shell consisting of approximately 42,000 sq. ft. in the new mixed-use development. The designated developer of the two-acre parcel, Jefferson Apartment Group (JAG), invested $100 million in the project. 234 housing units, 25,000 square feet of retail space, and 276 parking spaces on the site were constructed.

Mayor Christenson also led efforts with the planning board to rezone the downtown which created the opportunity for three new life science and lab spaces to be opened in a building that was previously vacant. The combined size of the three spaces are over 100,000 square feet.