NATICK, Mass. — Michael Du Gally and his wife, Kellie, searched for years for the right home. They bought a loft but decided the neighborhood was too gritty. Boston condos were too pricey. They thought about building a house but discarded the idea.
Recently, they found a fit. At the mall.
The DuGallys are among the suburban pioneers snatching up units in Nouvelle at Natick, a newly rising condominium complex where residents will be able to ride an elevator to a private hallway leading directly into the faux-birch-tree-lined atrium of the Natick Mall, recently expanded and renamed the Natick Collection.
Their $1.6-million, 2,200-square-foot penthouse overlooking J.C. Penney, the DuGallys said, suits the lifestyle they want for themselves and their Chihuahua, Jasmine.
“You just don’t see malls like this,” said Kellie DuGally, 37, owner of an online sales company in Hudson, who plans to convert one of the penthouse’s three bedrooms into a closet for her clothing and shoes. “It’s like you’re in a luxurious hotel.”
“We’re not about roughing it,” said Michael DuGally, 39, a one-time Newt Gingrich aide who now owns a Hudson-based furniture company that produces office cubicles.
For some, living at the mall is a way of a having it all, and developers across the country increasingly are connecting condos to suburban retail developments, targeting buyers who want shopping and luxury but not the hassles and higher prices that usually go with living in the city.
While the Belvedere at the Prudential Center, a downtown Boston tower that also sits atop a mall, offers views of the Christian Science Center’s reflecting pool and the city skyline, Nouvelle at Natick residents will have more suburban views, such as of Route 30, the Massachusetts Turnpike, and a strip of wetlands.
Developments mingling retail with residential have been embraced in the South, according to the International Council of Shopping Malls, and several projects are underway in Massachusetts, such as The Loop in Northborough and Avalon Hingham Shipyard.
“It’s a little scary living above a mall,” Kellie DuGally said. “I told Michael that he’d have to get a second job.”
