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Boston garage conversions: 6 major ones proposed or underway

Multiple buildings, thousands of apartments

By Tom Acitelli Updated

Boston’s development boom includes its largest garages.

Here are six garage conversions that are adding—or would add—thousands of new apartments, condos, hotel rooms, and offices to the city, beginning with the under-construction redevelopment of the Government Center Garage.

Government Center Garage

Rendering of six-building Bulfinch Crossing HYM Investment Group

↑ The ongoing conversion of the 2,300-space garage at 50 Sudbury Street is expected to produce 812 residential units, 196 hotel rooms, 1.15 million square feet of office space, and 85,000 square feet of retail.

The conversion will produce six buildings with 2.9 million square feet total.

Developer HYM Investment Group expects to wrap construction on what it’s calling Bulfinch Crossing by 2020. Here’s a cool timelapse video of part of Government Center Garage being demolished.

Clarendon Garage

A group of tall buildings with a pedestrian plaza in the foreground. Rendering via Pelli Clarke Pelli/Boston Properties

↑ A redevelopment of the Clarendon Garage at 100 Clarendon Street in Back Bay is part of Boston Properties’ plans to build 1.26 million square feet of housing, offices, and retail over and around Back Bay Station.

The Boston Planning & Development Agency signed off on the plans in mid-November, capping well over a year of wrangling over the project, in particular the shadows it would likely cast. One of its three new towers is expected to reach 364 feet.

Boston Properties reached a deal with opponents concerned about the shadows just before the November 16 vote. The developer will pay $3 million to opponents such as the Old South Church to mitigate the impact and a further $3 million to an affordable housing fund that Boston runs.

The project is envisioned as a kind of transformative gateway connecting Back Bay and the South End; and includes improvements to the station itself.

Dock Street Garage

Photo via BldUp

↑ This 698-square garage at 20 Clinton Street in downtown Boston could sprout 195 apartments or condos under plans that Brooklyn-based developer Fortis Property Group filed with the Boston Planning & Development Agency in early January.

Those plans call for re-cladding the building (which also includes a Hard Rock Cafe), reducing the number of parking spaces to 538, and adding a nine-story, 194-foot building with either condos or apartments.

More details are expected in the coming months.

Winthrop Square Garage

Rendering via Millennium Partners

↑ This is one of the biggest—and certainly the tallest—question marks in Boston real estate at the dawn of 2018: The conversion of the now-shuttered Winthrop Square Garage at 240 Devonshire Street.

Millennium Partners, the developer that purchased the garage from the city, had plans to build to 775 feet to create what would have been the tallest predominantly residential tower in Boston.

Concerns over potential shadows as well as how such a height might affect flights in and out of Logan led to a reduction around January 1 to a proposed 691 feet instead.

That would still make the tower the fourth-tallest in Boston if it gets built. It’s under public review.

Boston Harbor Garage

↑ The Chiofaro Co. has owned the 1,380-space Boston Harbor Garage at 270 Atlantic Avenue since 2007, and has been trying to redevelop it pretty much since then.

Previous projects have included a two-tower complex that included hotel rooms and condos—and an ice rink as part of a year-round open space—and a single skyscraper with offices and condos.

Disputes with the neighbors, including the New England Aquarium, have held up the plans, however, and, while the single-tower proposal appeared to take a big step forward last winter, plans still remain up in the air.

Garden Garage

Equity Residential

Developer Equity Residential plans to start construction this summer on a 44-story apartment tower in place of the Garden Garage at 35 Lomasney Way in the West End.

The building is slated to have 469 apartments, which will make it not only one of Boston’s largest residential buildings under construction but yet another example of a garage reborn.

It’s that rebirth that will occupy Equity Residential initially: The work this summer will entail the garage’s demolition, with tower construction to follow, according to the Globe’s Tim Logan.

The Boston Planning & Development Agency approved the plans back in 2016, and the tower is expected to open in 2021.

It will have newish neighbors in the immediate vicinity, not least of which the multi-building Hub on Causeway where the old Boston Garden used to be and the 503-unit Avalon North Station, which opened in late 2016 right across from the similarly named transit hub.

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