Hook Wharf/Image courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects
Construction of a 25-story tower including three restaurants and 357 select-service hotel rooms could replace the temporary trailers housing the James Hook & Co. lobster pound on the Boston waterfront by late 2024.
The 275,000-square-foot tower designed by Elkus Manfredi Architects includes a three-story podium including the hotel lobby, ballroom and meeting rooms, along with a 9,000-square-foot Hook Lobster restaurant on the ground floor. The project also includes a 10,750-square-foot restaurant on the fourth floor and 9,250 square-feet of dining space on the 25th floor, both with outdoor terraces, according to plans submitted this week to the Boston Planning & Development Agency by developer Moriarty Partners of Winchester.
The proposal is one of two seeking to build towers on downtown parcels following a 5-year planning process that culminated in new zoning for the waterfront between Seaport Boulevard and Christopher Columbus Park. The Conservation Law Foundation is challenging the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs’ 2018 approval of the city’s downtown waterfront municipal harbor plan, which cleared the way for greater height and density on the Hook Lobster property and Chiofaro & Co.’s Harbor Garage site.
In exchange for zoning for additional height and density, Hook Wharf developers agreed to make a payment of $500,000 to the Fort Point Operations Fund for open space and watersheet activation programs and $3.6 million for planning and construction of a park at the Chart House parking lot on Long Wharf.
Moriarty Partners hopes to break ground in early 2022 and complete the project in the third quarter of 2024, according to the PNF. The development team is coordinating the designs with the city’s plans for a replacement of the Northern Avenue Bridge, which spans Fort Point Channel just north of the half-acre Hook property.
The project also will include a free touch-and-go dock and docking space for small vessels and seafood deliveries. The wharf, which survived a 2008 fire that destroyed the original lobster pound, will be redeveloped, Moriarty Partners stated.
