Derby Street Shoppes - Hingham, MA

The emergence of lifestyle centers as community gathering places has created the opportunity to transition aging malls and plazas to lively retail centers. The Derby Street Shoppes in Hingham exemplify this trend through the replacement of a dated shopping plaza with a 435,000 sf village-style complex. BSC’s integrated team provided civil engineering, permitting and survey services to support the transformation of the 42-acre site to an attractive, high-end facility.

Key issues included:

• Maintaining Shopping Plaza Operations – The plaza’s retail clients wanted to maintain operations during construction, necessitating a site design that minimized impacts on existing grading and infrastructure. BSC met the need for increased infrastructure capacity by making major changes in site grading while meeting existing buildng slab elevations. New access driveways to service the expanded surface parking facilities and tenant service areas were also designed.
  
  
• Managing Storm and Waste Water - BSC’s design incorporated innovative systems to manage the site’s storm and waste water. The existing undersized storm drainage system was replaced with a shallow system of stormwater recharge chambers to eliminate additional stormwater runoff by recharging into the site’s porous soils. Additionally, a 54,000 gpd waste water treatment facility was included to handle the site’s waste water needs.
  
  
• Meeting Permitting and Documentation Requirements – BSC Group led the permitting process, involving several local permit approvals from the Hingham Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, Board of Health, and Conservation Commission. At the state level, BSC prepared a Single Environmental Impact Report that was approved by the Secretary of Environmental Affairs.