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BRA approves 48-unit apartment building in Packards Corner
By adamg on Thu, 04/16/2015 - 10:15pm
Architect's rendering.
The BRA board of directors today approved a six-story apartment building at 40 Malvern St.
The proposal, by the Hamilton Co., will include 4 one-bedroom units and 44 two-bedroom units. Of those, 6 will be affordable. The company is also planning a 44-space parking lot.
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Comments
"Of those, 6 will be affordable."
You left out: "If you just got out of the Business School".
How about this idea?
Prices will scale to income levels of the City of Boston.
Meaning: 20% of the units will be priced for the bottom 20%
20% for the next 20%
... and so on!
Would that be a reasonable deal for a subsidized project?
There's nothing unreasonable
There's nothing unreasonable about that breakdown on it's face, but you've just made a huge increase to the amount of money for the subsidy. Where's that money coming from? The school budget? The police/fire budget? HUD?
How about people pay market
How about people pay market value for housing and the BRA allow developers to quickly respond to overwhelming demand instead of delaying ever residential project by at least two years with red tape?
The only way to make housing cheaper is to build a lot more of it. The price fixing affordability scheme does nothing but make most housing more expensive to subsidize a few units and needlessly delay development.
Build baby build!
Careful
Simple solutions to complex problems generally make the issue worse.
Plus, it's not how the market operates today. I'm not passing good/bad judgement on the market - but political leaders and the BRA need to be pragmatic. They understand that most developers are in this for the benjamins and that levying a system you described would inhibit development in aggregate. Now, of course we can act in many ways to alleviate housing costs in Boston (e.g. improved mass transit to underserved communities in and around the city, maybe the BRA could actually collect and then spend some the affordable housing developer fees it has sorta collected, trade some density/height restrictions for higher percentages of affordable housing) but no one way is going to solve the problem entirely and you need to take the current operation of the market into account - regardless of how you feel about it and it's drooling fetish for luxury apts.
44 spaces? really?
One parking space per unit in a building that is one block from a train station? I guess it's better than the 96 spaces required by the zoning code, but it makes no sense when you consider how much less space can be used for housing (or green space!) when we have to use it for parking instead.
The project is on the site of
The project is on the site of a 63 space parking lot, so overall, the project is reducing parking on the site by 19 spaces. I try to view it as a win.
Limited parking
First off, 4 plus 44 adds up to 48 units (as per the title of the original post, "BRA approves 48-unit apartment building in Packards Corner"), so it's not one parking space per unit. And if 44 of those units are two-bedroom apartments, one can reasonably assume that there will be (at least) two tenants per unit in most of those. 88 plus 4 is 92 tenants. 44 parking spaces is pretty limited.
Also, it makes me laugh that you think the Packard's Corner stop on the B Line is a "train station."
Its unreasonable to assume
Its unreasonable to assume that 2 people living together in Boston would each have a car. My wife and I live in a 2 bedroom and have no cars, but many couples have 1 car in Boston. At places like this building, the income of people who would live there does not usually allow the luxury of a car for each person.
Unreasonable?
To me it seems equally unreasonable to assume that most tenants of two-bedroom apartments are couples.
Packards Corner is a stop
Packards Corner is a stop along a branch of the light rail network with heaviest ridership in the United States. The GL moves over 228K on an avg weekday - it can handle an extra 92.
Packard's Corner
I've lived near Packard's Corner for the best part of 60 years, and I know that commute on the B line all too well. It is hellish. It's also conceivable that people might live in the neighborhood who can't get to work by public transit, because of location or hours, for example.
It also seems plausible to me that Hamilton might rent out some of those parking spaces to people who aren't tenants of the building - there is a lively business in renting off-street parking around here. For that matter, some of those spaces could end up as Zipcar spaces, which would be a benefit to the building tenants and to the neighborhood.
While in general I'd argue for less parking ....
.... 44 spaces for 48 units doesn't strike me as excessive.
Why do almost all these new
Why do almost all these new developments popping up all over the city and neighborhoods look similar with no architectural character? I guess since these guys don't have to live in them, theycould care less. $$$$$$$
Because construction costs in
Because construction costs in Boston are astronomical (politics) compared to everywhere else and with the "affordability" requirements hitting the bottom line developers have to cut costs to make a profit and keep their investors/lenders happy with the highest rate of return at lowest possible risk.
middle class
you see, the typical middle class family isn't going to live in a 2 bedroom unit. Welcome home....to your dormitory !
Unaffordable
6 are "affordable," so I guess that means 38 will be "unaffordable." That's neat.
Only 4 one-bedroom units? Why are renters who do not want roommates punished in Boston? I've been renting for the past 10 years around Boston (I lived in Packards Corner for 3 of those years) and Cambridge, and I've always been put off by how few options there are for non-disgusting units meant for one or two people that are less $1500/month. I settled on a studio (!) that was $1225/month when I was in Packards Corner, because a 1-bedroom would have been at least $1600, which would have only been affordable if I had a roommate (and a roommate with whom I'd be sharing the bed). The only way to have affordable housing in this market is to have roommates, and something is wrong with that.
I guess the 17 studios and 35
I guess the 17 studios and 35 1BR units approved in March for 1505 Commonwealth last month don't count for creating housing for renters without roommates in A/B?
Let's be honest: studios
Let's be honest: studios shouldn't even be a thing. I was 'lucky' with my studio because I had just enough room to have a bed and a couch; most studios do not have space for both. If studios were ultra-cheap, then okay, but I was paying over $1200 for the 'luxury' of having one room. Otherwise, every unit that is designated as a living space should have at least 1 bed room.
So, great - 17 people can have a no-bedroom living space. How amazing. The 35 one-bedrooms is a start, but how much do they cost? Just having them isn't enough; Boston generally punishes those who want to live without roommates by making 1-BRs very expensive compared to a slight addition of cost for a second BR into which a roommate could then split the rent. If a 2-BR is around $2000, then a 1-BR should be around $1000, not $1600.
Bedrooms
are cheap to build. They take up square footage, paint, a little wiring and a little heating. Kitchens and bathrooms take counter tops, cabinets, appliances, plumbing, sinks, toilets, showers, tiling, etc etc etc. So it does make sense that if a 2-bed is $2000, a 1-bed is $1600.