Government Center Garage demolition just advanced a lot further

Half of the Government Center Garage in downtown Boston is doomed, thanks to a financing deal between National Real Estate Advisors LLC, the owner of the multi-building Bulfinch Crossing project due to supplant the Brutalist pile, and a Washington, D.C.-based firm called Carr Properties.

Carr is taking a 50 percent stake in One Congress, the 528-foot, 1 million-square-foot office tower that is set to be among the key features of Bulfinch Crossing. It will own that one part of the project with National Real Estate. And that stake is apparently enough for the tower to move forward—and that means bye-bye to half of the Government Center Garage.

Some of it has disappeared already amid the construction of an apartment and condo tower on New Sudbury Street. Bulfinch Crossing in total is supposed 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-slash-demolition of the garage will produce six buildings with 2.9 million square feet total. And it’s but one example of Boston’s pivot away from conventional parking garages, especially ones in areas ripe for development.

HYM Investment Group, Bulfinch Crossing’s developer, expects to start construction on One Congress in 2019, and to open it in 2022, per the Globe’s Tim Logan.

• Financing secured, construction of tower at Government Center Garage starts next summer [Globe]
• Major Boston development: 9 projects transforming the city [Curbed Boston]
• Boston parking garages are becoming a thing of the city’s past [Curbed Boston]
• Bulfinch Crossing construction timelapse: Away goes part of Government Center Garage [Curbed Boston]