:( Well, I guess the Fenway will be a yuppie hellhole soon..
From the Boston Phoenix...
LONG TIME COMING
The transformation of the neighborhood was set in motion four years ago, when the BRA, working with neighborhood groups, rezoned the area to encourage development - with or without the stadium, the future of which was still in flux at the time. Old rules had severely restricted building height and resident density. So, for example, the block of upper Boylston that is home to a Burger King, a parking lot, a Domino’s, a souvenir shop, and the Baseball Tavern has probably been used as profitably as possible, given the old zoning rules.
"It’s amazing that it’s sat undeveloped for so long," developer Steven Samuels says of upper Boylston. The same can be said of the entire area around Fenway Park, which consists primarily of surface parking lots and small office buildings - most of which currently display prominent "for lease" signs even as nearby medical facilities are searching for clinical and administrative space. Even the prominently located Landmark Center - formerly Sears and Roebuck - sat vacant for years, before finally being reincarnated as a general-purpose complex complete with office space, restaurants, a movie theater, and "destination" stores like Best Buy.
Under the new zoning rules, the block that contains Burger King and the Baseball Tavern, for instance, can, and will, be the site of a 14-story building with 210 apartments and condos, 85,000 square feet of office space, and 25,000 square feet of street-level retail stores - plus an underground 293-car garage.
"The new zoning makes the land valuable enough for developers to buy and tear down the one-story buildings," says Samuels, whose group just received BRA approval for that development, to be called 1330 Boylston, last month.
Samuels predicts that 3000 new residential units will open in the area within the next four years; he and his group are already building the Trilogy high-rise apartments up the street, across from the Star Market (which Samuels once tried to buy to build yet another residential high-rise, he says. They also hope to build a towering, thin structure reminiscent of New York" Flatiron Building at the tip of Boylston and Brookline, where a D’Angelo Sandwich Shop is now, and another residential high-rise displacing the Goodyear tire store and a parking garage behind it. The partnership owns rights to develop the "Point" parcel, and owns the parking garage but not the Goodyear - yet. They’re working on it, Samuels confirms.
LONG TIME COMING
The transformation of the neighborhood was set in motion four years ago, when the BRA, working with neighborhood groups, rezoned the area to encourage development - with or without the stadium, the future of which was still in flux at the time. Old rules had severely restricted building height and resident density. So, for example, the block of upper Boylston that is home to a Burger King, a parking lot, a Domino’s, a souvenir shop, and the Baseball Tavern has probably been used as profitably as possible, given the old zoning rules.
"It’s amazing that it’s sat undeveloped for so long," developer Steven Samuels says of upper Boylston. The same can be said of the entire area around Fenway Park, which consists primarily of surface parking lots and small office buildings - most of which currently display prominent "for lease" signs even as nearby medical facilities are searching for clinical and administrative space. Even the prominently located Landmark Center - formerly Sears and Roebuck - sat vacant for years, before finally being reincarnated as a general-purpose complex complete with office space, restaurants, a movie theater, and "destination" stores like Best Buy.
Under the new zoning rules, the block that contains Burger King and the Baseball Tavern, for instance, can, and will, be the site of a 14-story building with 210 apartments and condos, 85,000 square feet of office space, and 25,000 square feet of street-level retail stores - plus an underground 293-car garage.
"The new zoning makes the land valuable enough for developers to buy and tear down the one-story buildings," says Samuels, whose group just received BRA approval for that development, to be called 1330 Boylston, last month.
Samuels predicts that 3000 new residential units will open in the area within the next four years; he and his group are already building the Trilogy high-rise apartments up the street, across from the Star Market (which Samuels once tried to buy to build yet another residential high-rise, he says. They also hope to build a towering, thin structure reminiscent of New York" Flatiron Building at the tip of Boylston and Brookline, where a D’Angelo Sandwich Shop is now, and another residential high-rise displacing the Goodyear tire store and a parking garage behind it. The partnership owns rights to develop the "Point" parcel, and owns the parking garage but not the Goodyear - yet. They’re working on it, Samuels confirms.