The 290,000-square-foot 101 South St. includes 35,000-square-foot floor plates designed to offer maximum flexibility for tenants. Image courtesy of Leggat McCall Properties
The development team behind one of the first big life sciences projects in eastern Somerville says it has secured support from a key neighborhood group as it pursues entitlement for its project.
DLJ Capital Partners and Leggat McCall Properties, who are seeking to redevelop 6.5 acres of industrial real estate in Somerville’s Boynton Yards in a joint venture, announced the community benefits agreement in conjunction with Union Square Neighborhood Council Co-chairs Michele Hansen and Ann Camara earlier this week.
“We are pleased that the USNC’s voice is strongly represented in every aspect of this agreement. We look forward to more collaboration as Boynton Yards continues to be poised as a key economic driver for Somerville due to the current demand for Class A lab space,” DLJ Development Manager John Fenton said in a statement.
In exchange for a series of concessions, the neighborhood group will support DLJ’s and Leggatt McCall’s efforts to secure city approval for the 1.4 million-square-foot, five-building, mixed-use complex that takes advantage of the soon-to-complete Green Line Extension project tying the Union Square neighborhood to biotech hotspot East Cambridge. The first, 290,000 square-foot life sciences building – 101 South Street– was permitted separately, topped off in September and will be completed over the summer.
The centerpiece of the agreement will be a neighborhood community center and arts space located on the site of the development but funded by all Union Square developers. DLJ and Leggatt McCall say other developers working in the area “have already expressed interest in this approach,” which is the brainchild of the neighborhood group.
Other aspects of the agreement include a goal of hiring local workers for 35 percent of the construction workforce – Shawmut Design and Construction is the project general contractor – and seeking to make sure 10 percent of the construction workforce is women. The joint venture will also work with the city and future tenants to create internship and job opportunities for local residents and work with the neighborhood organization to develop a set of “sustainable business practices” that will be recommended to prospective commercial tenants in the project.
DLJ and Leggat McCall also agreed to explore carving out space for a bicycle and pedestrian bridge over the MBTA tracks that form the site’s northern border, adding green roofs to the project’s buildings despite their need for roof-mounted HVAC and filtration systems and “balance the parking needs of the Project with the mobility management needs/goals of the City and the community.”
The Boynton Yards project is one of several large projects proposed or approved for the areas around and between Union Square and Boston’s Sullivan Square, totaling over 5 million square feet of office/lab, hotel and residential space.
