There are many hives of apartment-building activity in Boston, and the area around North Station is one of them. There's the 38-story Nashua Street Residences with 503 apartments or condos (only the market knows which); one half of a two-tower development on the site of the old Boston Garden, which will have hundreds of apartments (or, again, condos) and be 430 feet high; the 286-unit Victor apartment building with its 121 parking spaces; the Merano off the Bulfinch Triangle, with its 230 apartments; and Lovejoy Wharf, which will include a 14-story building with around 100 apartments.
Noting that "transformations of this size and speed are rare in Boston," Paul McMorrow in The Globe notes that it took off due to a public-private symbiosis that was no accident. Instead, it can serve as "a blueprint for neighborhood-building." For one thing, the Big Dig (e.g., public monies to improve and expand develop-able acreage in the area) preceded the apartment-building activity (had to precede it, in fact). Also, everybody planned ahead as the Big Dig was going on, particularly area residents.
And, finally, the paperwork was in order when it came time for the private part of the equation: "Developers can move quickly on projects around Causeway Street because they know what they're getting into. The zoning on the street matches what's written on paper at City Hall. ... Zoning in much of the rest of the city is artificially low, forcing developers and neighborhood activists to engage in protracted but carefully choreographed rounds of negotiations."
Now, if the area could only get a damn supermarket (oh, wait).
· North Station Area Is a Blueprint for Neighborhood-Building [Globe]
· Our Updated Residential Heatmap: 66 Projects and Counting [Curbed Boston]
· Old Garden Site to Sprout Supermarket, Target, Apartments [Curbed Boston]
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