New Wave West Acton: Business Blooms in Village

Have you noticed anything new about West Acton? for quite some time, UpStyle Consignment went out of business this summer, and construction from 543-525 Massachusetts Avenue has bloomed new business in the area.

It’s safe to say that the West Acton strip is the closest thing Acton has for a communal downtown. Hair salons, pizza joints, a wine & beer convenient store, a coffee shop, an auto body shop, a community theatre around the corner, a playground and a gas station; with its potential still blossoming well into the fall season.

New Habitat Partners LLC, with design partners OMR Architects and contractors Bluefin Building & Design, LLC., (all locally operating on the West Acton strip) are working together to help transform West Acton into a small town economic giant.

“We are very selective when it comes to offering businesses our space,” said Mathias Rosenfeld, owner of New Habitat Partners LLC. “What we are looking for is a place for families and that’s why with Village Art and the Montessori School and the Ballet School, there is really the beginning of a family destination and when Twin Seafood comes in they will be able to feed everybody.”

conveniently relocated from 541 Massachusetts Avenue to 537 B Massachusetts Avenue, in a newly renovated space, leaving . From the old church where OMR Architects has been operating out of since the 1980’s, to the big yellow building (537 Massachusetts Avenue), new businesses like Twin Seafood, the Montessori School, Village Art and a handful of small businesses from the Law Office of William J. Hickey to Susan Moriarty’s Marketing and Design company, The Soap Box Studio, have mixed with old businesses like and the to form a unique business dynamic.

Darlene Paquette just purchased street-front property on 537 Massachusetts Avenue, where she opened the Children's House at the Acton Montessori School, where she specializes in an educational program that focuses on children's individual needs for emotional development. Enrollment is currently underway.

“Together we work with parents to find a program that best meets their needs,” said Paquette.

Parking is not an issue for this new development, since additional parking spaces have been added behind the buildings and on-street parking spots have been put in place. As construction continues to expand, so will the parking.

“We have created the infrastructure that will allow the village to be sustainable so we have added a ton of parking but we are hiding it in the back so it doesn’t become the primary feature,” said Rosenfeld. “When it is all said and done we will have added about 70 new off-street parking spots and about 20 new on-street parking spots.”

According to Rosenfeld, the empty homes alongside the 537 Massachusetts Avenue were unlivable and he has plans in the future to reconstruct them into possible businesses.

Mathias Rosenfeld received his Masters degree from MIT in City Planning and Sustainability in 2007 and his father, Michael Rosenfeld, owner of OMR Architects, is specialized in sustainable architecture and design.

“When my father purchased this property overtime, he did not have the intentions of redeveloping everything but it just ended up making sense to do,” said Rosenfeld. “When we were in this situation we knew that now we have to do something responsible with this land.”

The three business partners (the planners, designers and the contractors are New Habitat Partners LLC, OMR Architects and Bluefin Building & Design, LLC) have dubbed this construction the WAVE Project for West Acton (West Acton Village Ecology). Check out their Facebook page.