Developer proposes replacing four apartments with twenty condos in Orient Heights

A developer has filed plans to replace a four-unit house at 99-105 Addison St. in East Boston with a five-story, 20-unit condo building.

In his filing with the Boston Planning Department, Tony Luo of West Roxbury says the new $7-million building would have 10 parking spaces and room to store 22 bicycles, on a roughly 10,000-square-foot lot, with 16 two-bedroom units and 4 one-bedrom condos, each with "an open concept living space" and access to a rooftop deck and shared back yard.

The Proposed Project will comport with the character and context of the immediate area, which is surrounded by other existing, new and/or planned multi-family residential developments. ...

The Proposed Project’s urban design goal is to significantly enhance the street scape along Addison Street, with a well-designed building using high quality, modern building materials typical to a residential building and found within the neighborhood. A widened public sidewalk with proposed street trees, with a mix of hardscapes and landscaping, will help to provide a much more pedestrian friendly environment.

The filing says the building is in compliance with the lot's zoning, which means it does not require any affordable units, although the filing states the number of such units are "TBD." Because Luo filed his plans this week, the project would be grandfathered under new requirements that go into effect Oct. 1 that will require affordable units in such projects regardless of whether they need variances.

Because the building would sit near Chelsea Creek and not that far from Constitution Beach, it was designed to ride out flooding: The ground floor consists only of the lobby and parking, which would be "wetproofed" to withstand flooding, with actual condos on the floors above that, too high up to be hit by even major flooding. The building's mechanical systems would sit on the roof.

99-105 Addison St. filings and meeting/comment schedule.