Complex with a 20-story hotel/condo building and a 'town square' proposed for Rte. 9 in Brookline at the Newton line

City Realty last week unwrapped some of its ideas for the 5-acre office complex on Rte. 9 in Brookline at the Newton line it now owns: Replacing it completely with a new complex featuring a 20-story hotel/condo tower at the city line along with two shorter buildings with apartments, retail space and medical offices, all clustered around a "town square" the length of two football fields with a stream-like "water feature" that would encourage visitors to sit and enjoy themselves.

At a meeting of the Chestnut Hill Commercial Area Study Community Advisory Group last week, City Realty, which bought the four-building Chestnut Hill Office Park for $41 million in May, is currently looking at 200 to 250 rooms in a "full service" hotel, topped by another 150 condos, with 150 apartments in a 12-story building right along Rte. 9 and another 260 or so units of senior apartments in a 13-story building along Heath Street - which would range from units for people who need no help with daily living to units for people who need some help to those for people who need more intensive "memory care."

All three buildings would have two floors of restaurant, retail and "amenity" space, with the second floor of the senior building specifically set aside for medical offices. The complex would have two two-level underground garages with a total of about 845 parking spaces, they said, adding the spaces would be split between those set aside for residents and workers and those that would be free for visitors .

City Realty's consultants said the proposed "town square" at the center of the project would be totally unlike the car-choked parking lots that envelope both the Street and the Wegmans mall nearby.

The developer's urban-planning consultant, Chris Dempsey, said 87% of the non-building space at the proposed complex that would replace the current buildings would consist of pedestrian areas or landscaping, compared to just 29% at the Wegmans mall - officially Chestnut Hill Square - and 20% at the Street.

"There really is not a great public realm in this area," the developer's urban-planning consultant, Chris Dempsey, said.

Reducing the asphalt means putting the parking underground, and that's expensive, he said, so to pay that, the complex needs to have taller buildings. The 12-story building along Rte. 9 would, however, shield visitors from the noise and other aspects of Rte. 9, in contrast, he said, to the situation at the Street, where even visitors who partake in the cornhole and seating areas that mall's owner has put out have to look at whizzing traffic.

Possible drone's-eye view from the east, showing the town square:

The hotel/condo tower would be the tallest building put up by City Realty. It had earlier won approval for a 17-story residential building in Allston, but sold the property and the building rights to Boston University in June before beginning any construction.

Watch the meeting (caveat: The camera frequently and randomly zooms in and out).