So it's come to this: the new owner of the Burger King site at 1350 Boylston Street in the Fenway is facing community pressure to build "affordable" condos that would cost between $300,000 and $500,000. Skanska USA, co-developer of the 300-unit, mixed-use Watermark Seaport in Southie, bought the half-acre Burger King site at Kilmarnock Street for $12.5 million, and originally pitched an office tower. The Fenway Civic Association nixed that idea. “I’d rather have a Burger King for another 10 years than the wrong kind of development,” Bill Richardson, the association's head, told The Herald's Greg Turner.
So it looks like another apartment building with retail along that corridor near the ballpark. Hundreds of apartments and tens of thousands of square feet of commercial space, including hotels, have either been completed or announced since the middle of the last decade (heck, there might even be a Flatiron Building-type building as part of it all!). And who could forget Fenway Center, the epic, five-building, solar-powered, mixed-use project north of the Pike that, true to Boston form, is tied up in legal wrangling?
The Burger King site will likely host, then, a mostly residential building no higher than 15 stories. The thing that gets us, though, is the range noted for so-called affordable condos. Given the growth in the area—we'll just call it what it is: gentrification—those condos are going to be worth (and will sell for) a lot more in no time after they're built. We guess that's the way of things, though: buy in early, etc. Besides, the city needs the housing, no? Here's hoping it's family-sized.
· Builder Buys Burger King Site, Plans Fenway Project [Herald]
· Might Fenway Get Its Own Flatiron Building? 23-Story Proposal [Curbed Boston]
· World Trade Center Builder Behind New Seaport District Tower [Curbed Boston]
· Epic Solar-Powered Fenway Project to Start: 5 Buildings, $450M [Curbed Boston]
· Of Course: 5-Building Fenway Center Hits Legal Bump [Curbed Boston]
· As Red Sox Open, Surrounding Fenway Takes a Bow [Curbed Boston]
· Why the Hub Housing Market Could Get Worse, Much Worse [Curbed Boston]
· Boston Is for Lovers (Just Not Their Kids): a New Apt. Dynamic [Curbed Boston]