White City Painters — White City, by Lake Quinsigamond

White City opened on June 18, 1905, as a trolley park, the kind built at the end of a streetcar line to fill cars on weekends. It bordered Lake Quinsigamond and lasted 55 seasons before closing on September 5, 1960. A shopping center went up afterward on part of its 18-acre site. Today that center, at 20–120 Boston Turnpike on the Route 9 corridor, covers 27 acres with about 256,000 square feet of leasable space; its owner at the time of a 2014 renovation dated its original development to the 1960s.

No historic district or MACRIS area survey covers the streets near the plaza, so census numbers are our guide. The block group that holds the old park site counts 863 housing units with a median build year of 1959. Over a third of them (36.4%) date from 1939 or earlier, another 38.1% were built during the 1970s, and nothing in the estimate was built after 1999. Apartment buildings dominate: 56.9% of units sit in structures of five or more, 16.8% are in two-family houses, and only a quarter are detached single-family homes. Renters occupy 80.6% of the homes, a reversal of the town's 72% owner rate.

A large prewar share

With 314 units from before 1940, this block group has a much higher prewar share than Shrewsbury overall, where the figure is 11.4%. Wood siding and trim of that age can carry many decades of coatings, and when a lower layer loses adhesion, everything above it can lift with it.

Two-families with two sets of needs

About one unit in six is in a two-family building. When the owner lives in one half and rents the other, scheduling exterior work around a tenant and agreeing on access to porches and stairways deserve attention before the start date.

Lead rules for pre-1978 buildings

Because 91.4% of the units predate 1980, the federal renovation rule for pre-1978 housing is likely to cover paid work that disturbs paint in many of these buildings. Rental units and shared stairwells call for careful dust control; our lead-safe painting page explains testing and containment.

Mid-size apartment buildings

Some 300 units sit in buildings of 10 to 49 apartments, and 329 units in the block group date from the 1970s. When hallways, doors and railings in a building that size are shared property, a condo board or property manager decides colors and timing, not the individual occupant. See our condo painting page for Shrewsbury for insurance and scheduling details.