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More residential units approved for formerly industrial side of Mission Hill
By adamg on Tue, 12/18/2018 - 10:14am
Birds love the proposal for 111 Terrace St.
The Zoning Board of Appeals today approved a 39-unit, five-story residential building at 111 Terrace St., near Cedar Street, to replace an existing three-story apartment building and tow lot.
Developers Mark Blotner and Mark Cabral's proposal calls for five affordable units, two of which will be aimed at artists and will have a shared studio space.
The BPDA approved the proposal in October.
The company that owns the neighboring Mississippi's building at 103 Terrace St. objected to the proposal, saying it was far too dense for the lot under its current zoning and that the developers had yet to answer questions about such subjects as groundwater retention and traffic.
111 small-project review application (11.3 M PDF, shows an earlier plan for 42 units).
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Comments
BPDA
Ah, the BPDA fails again....for some buildings a garage door on the street is okay, but for others it is rejected.
If you listen to the hearing
If you listen to the hearing they did actually scrutinize it. They asked for a "more permeable material" for the door. The problem is that the usual solution is to request that the door be placed on the side of a building so that cars can enter and exit on a side road. This is a rare case where there are no side roads so the options are basically to have the door on the front or to make the whole building 15' shorter so that they can have a driveway on the side. The latter isn't really an improvement of course because now instead of a garage door you have an equally un-pedestrian-friendly driveway.
Wonder if you can still smell
Wonder if you can still smell the pickles over that way.
Groundwater retention
Didn't seem to be an issue when it was a tow lot.
The link to the PDF isn't
The link to the PDF isn't working.
Sorry
Should work now.
lmao
Only 5 "affordable" units out of 39. Who do these new buildings really benefit?
Affordable is a meaningless word
Affordable is a meaningless word. A better term is income-restricted. While only five of the homes will be income-restricted, the remaining 34 homes will presumably benefit the 34 individuals or families who will live in them.
Yes. On top of that, with the
Yes. On top of that, with the cost to build a 1,000 square foot apartment in Boston topping $450k and the sale price for a 2 bedroom being limited to $182,100, these units are actually very expensive to provide. That $268k per unit loss has to be paid for out of the profits from the remaining units, which means they have to sell for a very high price. So while 20% affordable might just barely work for buildings that are right across the street from the T, it's probably a little harder to make numbers like that work when your neighbors are mostly warehouses and old industrial sites and you have to listen to the sound of the train going by but you still have to walk 15-20 minutes to actually get to a station.
Link Redirects to this page.
FYI
Intersection
The intersection of Terrace and New Cedar can get quite gummed up at rush hour. Better traffic controls will be needed at this corner to manage the cars coming in and out of the depicted garage.
The traffic on this street
The traffic on this street comes almost entirely from folks hoping to avoid the traffic light at Heath and Columbus. The probably 5-10 trips this building is likely to add between 7 and 10 am (which works out to about 1 car every 18 minutes) are not going to make any detectable difference at all.
Homes in an industrial zone
To the new residents -- please do not file 311 complaints about the auto collision repair shop across the street. You are living in a light industrial zone, so inhale deeply and enjoy.
BPDA
Do they only approve ugly ass buildings?