This 140,000-square-foot office building has been proposed for 316-322 Summer St. in Boston’s Fort Point Channel area. Mayor Thomas M. Menino has asked the owner of the property to build housing instead of offices at the location.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino wants a developer to abandon plans to turn a pair of vacant warehouses into office space and build housing instead.
“The developer would like to see offices, but what the developer wants is not always what’s going to happen,” Menino told Banker & Tradesman. “We always live up to our commitments when it comes to the neighborhoods of our city.”
Menino’s remarks follow intense opposition from Fort Point Channel residents who said the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) has retreated on a promise of more housing in the neighborhood.
Earlier this month, residents protested Lincoln Property Co.’s proposal to convert 316-322 Summer St. into 140,000 square feet of office space with ground-floor retail. In 2006, the BRA approved plans by Archon/Goldman, the previous landlord, for a $47 million residential project that would have included 87 condominiums and eight artist live/work units.
But as the housing market fell, inventory grew and credit got tighter, Lincoln paid $17.8 million for the pair of buildings in December. Since then, they have proposed office space as vacancy rates in Boston dwindle to the single digits and rents rise.
At a packed public hearing, neighbors blamed the BRA for abandoning the city’s vision of a Fort Point district that would include a 24-hour, mixed-use neighborhood anchored by 11 acres of open space and 6 million square feet of development, with at least one-third as housing.
John F. Palmieri, BRA director, said the agency would review the planning and policy issues raised by residents. He said city officials would meet with the owners of Archon/Goldman who are proposing to rehabilitate and expand 173,000 square feet of space at 49, 51 and 63 Melcher St. If approved, the project will transform those vacant buildings into an 188,500-square-foot campus with penthouse and ground-floor retail.
“We want Archon/Goldman to meet with us so that we can better understand their vision because it’s changed since the last time we talked to them,” said Jessica Shumaker, a BRA spokeswoman.
Archon acquired 14 buildings with a total of 1.2 million square feet of office space and a garage in 2005 for $92 million. Since then, the firm has sold nine of them. The brick-and-wood-timber structures are located near South Station and the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center on a parcel bordered by Necco Court, A and Necco streets.
The BRA’s reversal took Steven Hollinger by surprise. The longtime resident and member of the Seaport Alliance for Neighborhood Design has been pushing the city to keep its commitments to build more housing.
“We have not seen the BRA exert that amount of pressure on developers to do something incrementally toward completion of a plan for our evolving neighborhood,” he said. “This is a very positive step.”
