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Another East Boston garage to get torn down for housing
By adamg on Tue, 02/19/2019 - 8:00pm
Bird-enhanced architect's rendering.
A local landlord is proposing to replace a limo garage at 28-30 Geneva St., at Gove Street, with a five-story, 27-unit residential building with 19 parking spaces.
In his filing with the BPDA, Joel DeLuca of East Boston says his $5.2-million building will "revitalize this East Boston neighborhood by replacing the existing dilapidated commercial building with a residential building that will add new housing units to the increasingly popular East Boston community."
Most of the units will have one bedroom, each about 650 square feet; three two-bedroom units will have 815 square feet and the one three-bedroom unit will have 1,140 square feet.
DeLuca hopes to begin construction this summer, with completion scheduled in fall or winter of 2020.
28-30 Geneva St. small-project review application (15.2M PDF).
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Comments
Today I learned that my
Today I learned that my neighborhood needs to be revitalized. Hmm!
Kind of surprised that so few of the units are 2bed+.
Demand is for fewer bedrooms
Boston is massively overbuilt on 3 and 4 bedroom units. People want smaller apartments, not twenty room mates.
Boston is massively overbuilt
Boston is massively overbuilt on 3 and 4 bedroom units. People want smaller apartments, not twenty room mates.
Good luck convincing any NIMBY Baby Boomer of this. They all think Boston actually needs more 3 or 4 bedroom places for families since they all grew up in homes like that with five cars per family to boot.
Really
The only way the bros can afford these units if he has two of his bro friends and their girlfriends move in with him.
You said he wants to put up a residential building
but you illustrated it with a drawing of a pile of shirt boxes.
Does anyone find this
building hideous? Why does the BODA allow shit like this in every neighborhood but the Seaport?
How about we just build lots of Dingbats!
4-8 units and LOADS of parking!
Isn't that what everyone says they want instead of these boxes? While complaining about affordability?
Does anyone find this
People said the same exact thing about triple deckers back in the day and now they're considered an important example of regional architecture.
No they didnt
In architectural school they said the Victorian triple decker was the most popular urban design.
I’d like to know how many people who like the Home Depot look in condos actually buy into them?
In architectural school they
That's correct. It was popular to build because it was quick, inexpensive housing for a city growing mostly through immigration. And it is well documented that Brahmin Boston thumbed their noses at this perceived cheap housing as uncouth.
Triple deckers are iconic.
But "iconic" is not always beautiful.
good article on this
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-america-s-new-apa...
The unfortunate people of Eastie
are going down the slippery slope of mismanaged development that Southie and now Dorchester is going through. Overdevelopment with not enough parking is a problem. And contrary to what the developers and bullshitters will tell you, dense development does NOT lower housing or rental prices and providing insufficient parking because a development is next to an MBTA station or bus stop does not mean the traffic and parking problems are solved. Hyde Park and West Roxbury dies not have this type over development because Menino would not allow it there.
Open space is not a bad thing.
Councilor Flaherty, is that
Councilor Flaherty, is that you?
I like it
This is how the area is zoned so clearly this is what the neighborhood wanted. I think it will improve this particular street significantly. West Roxbury and HP are zoned differently for a reason. I also disagree that Southie and Dorchester are being over built. Most developments there are filling in long vacant housing lots. In the big picture, building dense housing in urban areas could actually help preserve open space
Luke, i am your density
This is the site as it appears today. It's two empty lots.
https://goo.gl/maps/unfb2smjxus
The parking war is already
The parking war is already lost on the street-by-street level. It will need to be addressed with some combination of limited and/or paid permits, increased tolls, subsidies for public transportation fare, making public transportation quasi-reliable, better availability of short-term rental cars, etc.
I'm not against efforts to integrate residential parking into new construction where possible. But let's be real: parking and traffic congestion would continue to get worse even if not one single new unit was ever approved again.
The T has been allowed to deteriorate to the point where it's not a viable option even for many people who live nearby, it' s not much of a cost savings over owning a car, and there are no checks on people abusing street parking.
We need places for people to live. Convincing them to ditch their cars is important but can't be an excuse to stop creating housing.
You know what would really solve this problem?
Fewer people.
But that's kind of taboo to bring up, isn't it?
Build it
n/t
Terribly ugly but WOOHOO a
Terribly ugly but WOOHOO a few balconies! Ever notice how most of these boring looking boxes popping up everywhere have no outside space whatsoever? It costs more of course which is why it's so rare, even in the nasty new Seaport District... sorry frustrated architect-wannabe here!
Ugly piece of...
...crapitechture. Better than the garage currently there? Yeah, for the developer. Anyone paying the kind of money they want for this crap is brain-dead. We are cranking out some seriously ugly, cheap buildings that will not wear as well as triple deckers. Density is not a bad thing. Bad taste is.
Is it bad taste...
...or is it simply no taste whatsoever?
These things are being thrown up by the bushel because it's simply "what is done" nowadays. We're herd mammals, after all.
The very idea of a building being elegant, beautiful, or delightful has been lost. The people putting these things up don't even know they're bad, because they have utterly no sense of bad or good in a building anymore. They're just following the template.