Real Estate

SBTAP (the South Boston Transportation Action Plan) has the mission to improve traffic of all kinds in the central area of South Boston.  Last week, SBTAP held a community meeting and presented an initial list of draft recommendations to accomplish this.  Patrick Hoey, the Neighborhood Planning Director from the BTD (Boston Transportation Department) gave the presentation. It is important to note that SBTAP’s recommendations do not apply to all of South Boston. The SBTAP area amounts to just about one-third of the total square footage in South Boston, and it’s bordered on the west by Old Colony Boulevard and Dorchester Avenue down to Broadway Station.  It extends to the east between First Street, Ninth Street, and Day Boulevard all the way to Farragut Road.  The [...]

by Rick Winterson For the past few years, a project entitled “Dorchester Bay City” (DBC) has been in the works – from initial exploratory discussions to the formation of development/construction organizations, and recently followed by the first property usage plans and proposed building designs.  Briefly, the DBC development agent is Accordia Partners, LLC; the DBC area is just over 35 acres.  Initial proposals (all of them still under review) amount to more than six million square feet and the total DBC project cost will be several billion dollars, particularly if much of the space is devoted to life sciences – a very fast-growing (but costly) Boston industry. Make no mistake, DBC is a massive project entirely located within the district we call “Columbia Point”.  The [...]

by Rick Winterson  Tuesday evening at 6 p.m., a ZOOM meeting began, which concerned the major project at 776 Summer Street.  This ZOOM meeting explained the first onsite step, called “Deconstruction,” in developing the property where the Edison Power Plant now sits – at the 776 Summer Street address, from the Dedicated Freight Corridor near the Reserved Channel, and extending around the corner of East First Street.  The developer of this property is Hilco Redevelopment Partners (HRP), who acquired the property five years ago. The property to be developed was once called the Edison Power Plant, or just “the Edison”.  L Street Station was another name it had.  South Boston Online will refer to it as HRP’s development or as “776 Summer Street”, the address [...]

by Rick Winterson     No one has to be told that South Boston is an unusual place.  It was annexed to the City of Boston 215 years ago in 1804, and certain areas in Southie still retains their original names, evoking a “once-upon-a-time” connection with Dorchester.  These names include Washington Village, whose brother neighborhood was Adams Village near Quincy, and of course, Dorchester Heights, the site that anchored the first Evacuation Day on March 17, 1776. After 215 years, South Boston’s historic beginnings, middles, and current-day endings have seen enormous, earthquake-like developments, accompanied by equally enormous, earthquake-like arguments between its residents and its developers.  Zoning and its controlling regulations were supposed to provide the answers (or were they?). At approximately 40,000 residents, South Boston [...]