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Vacant lot across from Green Street T stop could be replaced by apartments, restaurant
By adamg on Thu, 06/11/2015 - 9:53am
Archtect's rendering.
Developer Chris DiSisto says the condos he built at Amory and Green streets in 2012 worked out so well he wants to replicate their success across the street. In a filing with the BRA, DiSisto is proposing a 15-unit apartment building across Amory from the T stop that would also have retail space - including for a restaurant DiSisto says he wants to run.
The proposed Bartlett Square II building would sit on what is now a vacant lot that is used for parking for businesses in the first Bartlett Square building.
The Project addresses the dire need for rental housing near a major public transportation station. It also seeks to improve the safety and liveliness of the area, which can be desolate at night. ... Given the proximity to the subway, the Project promises to appeal to renters not dependent on cars and to be a paragon of transit-oriented development.
DiSisto is proposing 15 or 16 parking spaces for the new apartments, along with solar panels on the roof and a small amount of office space. Three of the apartments would have three bedrooms; two of the units in the building would be designated as affordable.
Bartlett Square II small-project review application (11M PDF).
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Comments
quote architect's rendering unquote
They didn't even try to add a blimp!
I know nothing about the site/area, but it looks like classic 2010s rent-able residential architecture style, if that's a thing.
(slight facade undulation, patchwork facade material palette, few slightly angled roof accentuations, all to visually break up main mass, ect....)
Whateverism
is the accepted name.
What to know about the site
It is directly across the street from Green St station, and there should've been a mixed-use development put there yesterday.
Having a dirt parking lot in that spot is beyond insane, as are most of the objections being registered by the usual NIMBY suspects.
Ahem, its not just a dirt
Ahem, its not just a dirt parking lot. It also has multiple dumpsters!
No rational person would be against this development. It is right across from the T and there are no houses next to it so it should be even taller. Hopefully construction starts this year.
Those dumpsters are historic!
The best complaint I've heard so far is "lack of green space" in the proposed design.
Also right across the street: Southwest Corridor Park.
No rational person would be
So, ...how many people are against it?
Looks absolutely identical to
Looks absolutely identical to every other apartment building I see sprouting up, i.e., in Watertown, Waltham, etc., four or five stories high and nothing available under $2,000 a month.
This will be fantastic, but
This will be fantastic, but everyone is going to hit the roof.
For some reason I talk to people who would prefer that it remain a nasty sand lot full of junk. Housing near a T station? Replacing a chain link enclosed parking lot? Putting in a restaurant? Count me in favor.
I love it.
I am 100% in favor of this.
Love the new development above Bartett Square Cafe, and I like the aesthetic. Also, a much closer restaurant than Centre Street.
Win Win.
I'm all for it except
I wish he'd just let some professionals run the restaurant instead of taking it on as some kind of sideline. Bartlett Square Cafe has not been the asset to the area that we'd have liked to see--limited hours, dismal Yelp reviews--and there are so many talented, hard-working local food folks that could do something great with this spot (ahem--Exodus Bagels, Tiffani Faison, MeiMei...)
I don't know,
I love Bartlett Square Cafe, or Cafe Bartlett Square (Depending on who you talk to.)
The hours work for me, they have an excellent selection of smoothies post run, and their pastries are 10 times better than JP Licks, oh yeah, they have ice cream and personal pizzas as well.
I don't understand the thumbs down for CBS that so many seem to have.
This has been an interesting sidebar
I am working up to a 20 mile run, and my mapping has me ending at Green Street. So, this place gets the thumbs up for a post run stop for refreshment.
I've only been to Bartlett
I've only been to Bartlett Square Cafe once, and don't remember it being as bad as all that. Fortunately, if it is, Canto 6 is just a block away and has excellent pastries and pretty decent sandwiches.
As for their hours, they can't possibly be less useful than the "Boston Cyberarts Gallery" in the station. After taking the T most work days for 2 years and occasionally on the weekends, I think I saw it open twice.
I've moved away from the area, but I think the development is a great idea. It looks a little generic, but I can live with that to bring a little vitality into that area. Longer term I'd worry that BnB and some of the studio space in the brewery are going to be forced out by rising rents, but that space is too well-situated to not be built first.
I meant to mention
the moribund gallery!! It seems as if it should be a fun, lively place--the gallery before them was pretty great--but there's so rarely any sign of life there. It seems like a terribly wasted opportunity.
With Ula and Canto 6 each two blocks away, I'm not really surprised that Bartlett Square is literally giving away free coffee in the morning. I'm not saying it's the worst, only that it could be infinitely better and that I'd rather not see the mistakes made there replicated across the street.
I object to the proposed density and parking ratio
It should be twice as dense and provide half as much parking.
And don't ask me to substantiate my claims because the neighborhood groups who have been watering down this project for the last six months provide no facts regarding the supposed "impacts."
(and yes, i do live in the neighborhood.)
Impact Report:
- THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT!!!! Change is bad.
Havana Pete's is the name of the proposed restuarant
Originally it was "Redneck Pete's." Either one sounds more like a Seaport chain place.
http://www.jamaicaplainnews.com/2015/02/27/havana-petes-could-bring-beer...
That's like opening an Olive
That's like opening an Olive Garden in the north end.
And calling it Napoli Bob's
Or Palermo Patty's. I'm hoping he's re-thought this one.
Bring back the brick
I have to say I'm not a huge fan of that new apartment building look (now seeming to be the new trend in Boston), wish developers would bring back classic brick buildings.
Costs
Plain and simple. Masonry is much more expensive to build with.
They could go with a panelized brick system, which would cost less, but that makes brick not look so much like brick, if you get what I'm saying. Truth in materials, I guess.
The imagery above is just colors at this point. We're too far away to see any textural detail. They could be using a fiber cement shingle style panel? Who knows. Those who have been at the neighborhood meetings could probably weigh in.
Actually -
The orange tones look like a terra cotta-type veneer panel. Unless it's wood? Hard to know.
Why construct buildings of
Why construct buildings of quality when you can slash costs by mixing plastic and concrete? Architects of today have no integrity. They have cheapened what was once a noble profession. They execute pre-fab cookie-cutter crap instead of designing structures which balance function and aesthetics. I overheard an architect at a local bar the other day loudly boasting that he was designing Howard Stern's closets in his new mansion in Palm Beach... no one was impressed. Is this what the BAC is churning out?
insert "Developers"...
...in place of "Architects" at the beginning of your second sentence and you might be a little closer to the truth. It ain't the architect buying the bricks..
Wow
Way to not understand the profession. At ALL. Nor do you understand the education that goes into it.
Wow?
Please illuminate us then. Explain to us why you are in favor of the plastic-looking boxes going up in Boston? It's not as if they are affordable to the middle class, so there goes that one out the window.
Where
exactly did I say I favor plastic-looking boxes?
And to comment on it being about affordability to the middle classes - please. It's about the bottom line for developers and their banks.
2 "affordable" units out of
2 "affordable" units out of 15 in a neighborhood that is quickly becoming completely unaffordable - so disappointing. Unfortunately, I will have to move soon because my well paying job doesn't pay enough for me to continue renting in JP. I can't even imagine how hard it is for the rest of the JP community who may have families to care for. Boston is quickly pricing even the middle class completely out of the city and outer city.
c'mon down to Hyde Park...
..and join the rest of the JP, then Rozzie, refugees!
even some former brookliners and somervillains down here.
Except...
...that this is an empty lot that literally displaces no one. JP (and every single Boston neighborhood save the Seaport and Financial Dostrict) is chock full of housing that should by right be affordable if not downright cheap: 3 and 4 story walk-ups, with no views, next to train tracks or highways, in hundred year old buildings with poor wiring and terrible climate control, and rodent problems. New housing is always more expensive than old housing of similar type, so if you have this (and many others like it) built, they absorb most of the influx of richer people and the rest of us can have the perfectly livable (but with some problems, sure) older stock. If this (and the others like it) don't get built, the richer folk who want to live here will come anyway, and out bid on the remaining older stuff.
A vacant lot has 0 affordable
A vacant lot has 0 affordable units.