Winthrop Square Garage tower faces another delay

Plans for what would be New England’s tallest primarily residential tower have hit yet another snag.

Recall that concerns over the potential shadows that a 775-foot redevelopment of the city-owned Winthrop Square Garage would cast has held up developer Millennium Partners’ plans for the site. Those plans include condos on the top 36 floors, with offices, retail, and public space below.

State and local officials recently reached a tentative agreement that would allow the tower to move forward. Basically, the deal involves helping fund the upkeep of the Rose Kennedy Greenway and maybe the Boston Common and the Public Garden as well.

As one can imagine, such an agreement has many moving parts; and now one of those parts has grounded the whole thing to a halt: William Galvin, the commonwealth’s secretary of state, wants to delay for at least two weeks a vote of the Massachusetts Historical Commission that he controls.

The commission needs to sign off on the tower and its shadows (it can’t really stop it, but it could effectively do so through delay). Galvin told the Globe’s Tim Logan he wants more time to research the potential impact of those shadows on the Common, etc.

But, as Logan writes, “it’s still unclear whether the powerful Beacon Hill insider’s concerns amount to a speed bump or become a bigger obstacle for the complex project.”

Stay tuned.

• William Galvin seeks pause on shadow law vote [Globe]
• Boston's 10 tallest buildings by 2020, mapped [Curbed Boston]
• Winthrop Square tower could move forward under Greenway funding deal [Curbed Boston]