Developer seeks to change proposed Roxbury apartment building from senior to family rentals

The Cruz Development Corp., which won BPDA approval in 2016 for a 44-unit senior-citizen apartment building at Warren and Waverly streets in Roxbury, is asking for permission to instead put up the building as a 48-unit affordable building open to anybody.

The apartments would be rented to people making between 30% and 120% of the Boston area median income, Cruz says in a "notice of project change" filed with the BPDA.

The Roxbury-based developer says the five-story building would have 24 parking spaces, would be next to a four-story building that Cruz put up as part of its 2016 approval and would have ground-floor space for restaurant and neighborhood-office use.

The proposed architectural style continues to reflect the architecture along Warren Street and in the adjacent Roxbury residential neighborhoods. The use of brick, traditional bays, mansard roofs and familiar windows, translated into a more modern form, is in keeping with other new residential developments of this era in this area.

It is expected that the overall project would restore a residential presence and vitality to this long-abandoned site and productively refinish and establish this neighborhood edge. To reinforce this sense of extension of the residential fabric, we believe that the commercial, restaurant and office space used at the first floor of
both phases is traditional on Warren Street and appropriate in restoring a sense of street vitality.

280-290 Warren St. filings.