The Hub's No. 1 neighborhood (per you, dear reader) is about to get a big new mixed-use project that's as notable for its ambitions as for the simple fact that it might happen. Per Casey Ross in The Globe, developer National Development wants to transform the old Boston Herald headquartersin the South End. (The newspaper moved just days ago to a new spot in the Seaport District.)
National Development said it wants to demolish the old Herald building and erect new ones of five to nine stories each, with 475 one- to three-bedroom apartments total, a grocery store (imagine that), and a melange of smaller shops and restaurants, all designed by architecture firm Elkus Manfredi to look like, in Ross' words, "an authentic city block" (the project's tentative name is the Ink Block).The signature building, at Herald Street and Harrison Avenue, would be a nine-story glass apartment one.
While the scope is ambitious—the project would be one of the largest residential ones in Boston—the simple reality of it is perhaps more noteworthy. The 6-acre Herald site is one of the few buildable areas in Boston, and most of the city's ballyhooed new development has been planned for miles, or at least blocks, from the South End (South Boston waterfront, East Boston, Copley Place, etc.).
No word yet on the cost (said to be in the hundreds of millions) or the schedule (it will soon by under review by the Boston Redevelopment Authority).
· Bigger, Bolder Plan for Herald Site [Globe]
· The Curbed Boston Cup Neighborhood of the Year: the South End! [Curbed Boston]
· The Year of the Shovel: Hub Development in 2011 [Curbed Boston]