The Boston Arts Academy, a performing arts high school, could be sold to the Boston Red Sox and increase the team’s real estate holdings around the park.
A plan to move a Boston performing arts high school from the Fenway to the Theatre District could give the Red Sox a chance to expand their real estate holdings around the park.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino wants to build a new Boston Arts Academy on a city-owned parking lot between the Doubletree Ho-tel and the Tufts Medical Center at Tremont and Washington streets. If approved, the city would sell the high school at 176 Ipswich St., behind Fenway Park, and use the proceeds toward a $100 million school. The school is assessed at $13.2 million.
“We don’t have anything official to say about it,” said Janet Marie Smith, the Boston Red Sox staff architect. “We are watching this with great interest, but the last thing we want to do is appear as though we are pushing the school out.”
The Red Sox have been buying property around the park since a consortium headed by John Henry bought the team in 2002 for $660 million. So far the team, under the name of New England Sports Ventures, has purchased the former Sophia’s Latin Bar and Restaurant at 1270 Boylston St., 160-170 Ipswich St., the Town Taxi garages at 154-156 Ipswich St., radio station WBCN’s former headquarters at 1265 Boylston St. and a McDonald’s restaurant at 1282 Boylston St.
In addition, Michael Dee, the team’s chief operating officer, told Banker & Tradesman last fall that the ball club intends to purchase the parking garage behind the park at 49-67 Lansdowne St. When the team secures the 2-story concrete building, Dee said the Red Sox would raze the facility and replace it with one of about the same size, which would feature first-floor retail.
Owning Ipswich St.
The three-story, yellow brick performing arts school would add 120,000 square feet of space to the team’s real estate inventory.
William Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association, said the Sox would be the probable buyers of any real estate on Ipswich Street. “My guess is that the Sox would create office space which would allow them to move people out of Fenway Park to make way for more ballpark-related uses at Fenway,” he said. “They could also use a portion of the school as a function hall and build a roof-top deck that would look onto the field.”
The other major real estate buyer in the neighborhood, Samuels & Associates, probably won’t bid on the building, Richardson said, because the Boston-based developer is focused on revitalizing a stretch of Boylston Street near the park.
Samuels, who has purchased a number of properties in the area, recently completed 1330 Boylston, a mixed-use project with apartments and the new home of the Fenway Community Health Center, and Trilogy, the $220 million, 580-unit apartment building at the corner of Brookline Avenue and Boylston Street, that offers ground-floor retail.
Peter Sougarides, vice president of development at Samuels & Assoc., did not return a call seeking comment. But neighborhood sources say Samuels is planning more mixed–use development in underused parcels the firm has purchased along the gritty street.
