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Sullivan Square could get two apartment buildings
By adamg on Mon, 02/22/2016 - 5:26pm
Architect's rendering.
A downtown developer has filed plans for a 171-unit, two-building complex where Cambridge Street and Rutherford Avenue come together.
In plans filed with the BRA today, Berkeley Investments says it will gut and rehab the Graphic Arts Finishers building at 32 Cambridge St. and replace a second building at 572 Rutherford Ave. for a new development it says will knit an existing neighborhood to the south with the Sullivan Square T stop.
The Project will transform the site and create a link between the residential neighborhood to the southeast and Sullivan Square Station to the northwest. This connection will be strengthened by street-level retail and an improved streetscape, including new landscaping. In addition, the new residents will enliven the streetscape and improve safety in this area. The size and location of the site make the Project a key component of the redevelopment of Sullivan Square.
The Cambridge Street building will be turned into 52 apartments and roughly 2,500 square feet of retail space that "could potentially include a bakery, coffee shop or small restaurant," as well as 16 street-level spaces. The Rutherford Avenue building will be torn down to make way for a building with roughly 119 residential units about 98 parking spaces, more or less, in a garage. A basement will have room for 171 bicycles.
The bulk of the units will be studios and one-bedroom apartments with 12 two-bedroom units and three three-bedroom units. Roughly 23 units will be rented as affordable, to people making up to 80% of the area median income.
Berkeley Investments hopes to break ground this December, with the project ready for tenants in March, 2018.
32 Cambridge project notification form (98M PDF).
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Comments
I can think of few more depressing places to live
than Sullivan Square. I don't care about the granite counter-tops.
Agreed but..
At least people are not being shot every day like other parts of the city.
ppl said the same thing about..
...the area around Broadway T stop in SoBo. Now it's called Broadway Village.
Just a matter of time for Sullivan Square.
Broadway Village
Full of heroin junkies from the Broadway projects, and not much else. Great place indeed.
I wonder why anyone would want to live there
Oh, wait, never mind.
Live within 2 blocks of it
Live within 2 blocks of it now, and have for 7 years. Here's the reality:
It may be very rough around the edges, but from a logistical standpoint it's incredibly tough to beat for the price. There's a reason why new tenements/duplexes have been going up in that part of East Somerville, as well as constant renovation of existing rental stock.
My first thought was, great,
My first thought was, great, they're finally building some new apartments on those parking lots RIGHT NEXT TO a T station, to help with the out-of-control housing shortage around here.
But then I saw they're renovating or replacing existing buildings. Which I guess is better than nothing (assuming you don't find the existing businesses useful). But I wouldn't want to live next to all those vacant lots.
It wouldn't do much really
It wouldn't do much really without limits on speculation.
Sullivan Square Redevelopment
Sullivan Square is the perfect place to build another urban village like Assembly Square, but with lots of housing for working people, even hi-rises. the BRA did a study over 2 years ago but nothing has come of it. http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/60148791-0d78-...
Maybe the Start?
It's possible Berkley Investments used the study as a jumping off point for their design. The properties being redone in this scheme fall on the private land parts of the site plans in the link you provided.
Don't throw the idea of that BRA study out just yet: it can take years for things to get moving after a study like that, financing being the largest reason. I can tell you from my experience at one particular design firm, we had drawings for the Seaport district begun in the mid 90's with nothing happening for years after that.
How much more traffic can we stuff in there?
Sullivan Square is already a nightmare twice a day. We have a casino that's going to add to the mix, with potentially hundreds more cars a day. Assembly square is still under construction. The T is a joke.
They should have left the over pass. As ugly as it was, Sullivan was not choked up like it is now.
Why cater to suburban traffic
Why cater to suburban traffic instead of city residents?
If traffic sucks enough people will seek alternate routes.
The city spent 50+ years bulldozing itself at the expense of residents to benefit suburban commuters. It's about fricken time the tables were turned in favor of those which live here.
There will always be more traffic
People are never going to stop driving.
Even if nobody in this building has a car, people visiting them will. Deliveries will come in vehicles.
Look at Assembly Sq. It has its own t-stop. Yet hundreds and hundreds of parking spaces have gone in there too.
You think people are going to only take the T to the casino? Think again.
You are never going to live in your car free utopia. So get used to the idea of living with a smog filled traffic jam outside your window.
You are never going to live
And you are arguing on a false pretense. Surely there's lots of space between car-free utopia and car-dominated dystopia, right? Like, maybe something we might call a well balanced and functional transportation system?
Now there is a fantasy world.
A well balanced transportation system? We can't even get trains to run right in one if the mildest winters.
The MBTA is going to trudge along like it always does, under funded, over used and barely working.
Same with the highway system.
You will be cycling from Sullivan to Boston on the same roads that exist now, just with much more traffic.
Traffic? It's Sullivan Square
Traffic? It's Sullivan Square. The absolutely only amenity that makes it worth living there is that it's close to the T. You think this is going to be people working on 128 who've been saving up for that perfect condo in the city that overlooks a shithole of a traffic circle?
A lot of people have jobs out
A lot of people have jobs out in the suburbs and work in the city.
Better yet
It has 93 going right above it, where cars only occasionally plummet down to the road below!
First They Came For Fort Point
People have said the same thing about every industrialized area of the city and in surrounding communities. But as they get redeveloped they start looking much more appealing. You have to start somewhere.
I've never been one
to complain about the (pretty much lone) design of new buildings on here, but this triggered a reaction for some reason. I feel like these "architects" are just using copy+paste at this point. It works for brownstones, not so much for these.
here he goes again, that whiny cocksucker
#crapitecture you are correct sir. It looks like someone chucked an abortion against a wall.
It's god-awful tiresome...sort of like these rants.
And since you're not allowed to complain about bad architecture around here unless you propose something better, here ya go. Certainly not any fucking worse.
Now I see the problem
You need to move to Andover or Weymouth.
naw
I was thinking more like Bruges, Quebec City, Halifax, Madrid, Edinburgh,.... There are modern, moderate to high density parts of all those cities that don't look like a no-name collection of could-be-anywhere, poor quality, uninteresting shoeboxes that will be torn down before the first generation ages out of them. Can anyone actually distinguish between all these architect's...sorry Autocad operator's renderings?
nevermind..just fill up every available inch with these cubes. It makes someone money and apparently that is all that matters. Can't wait to be Lost in the Supermarket.
I reacted too
Something about the design made me think "prison".
"prison". Really?
"prison". Really?
<shrug>
I think it's the corner that brings to mind a guard tower. Or maybe the boring, institutional sameness.
You do know there was a
You do know there was a prison nearby? And that area was heavily commercialized , potatoe sheds, rail yards . milkeries...
Grey = Prison
Didn't you know?
yer right...
these developments are an insult to the quality prisons they used to build. We use them now for fancy hotels, ferfucksake.
It's a Building
What do you expect, cornices and gargoyles?
It's fine. It may not be anything to garner praise and design awards, but it serves its purpose.
Exactly
You don't want every building to be a stand out design. It's perfectly fine to have background buildings - it's what helps those standout designs, you know, stand out.
Robert Campbell once opined, "It's nice to report that Stern doesn't do a Georgian building, thus adding one more ingredient to this mixed salad of styles. Nor has he done anything flashily contemporary. He's done the kind of building that we don't see enough of in this age of so-called "starchitects." It's a background building, not an architectural adventurer strutting on a stage. It's a building that's devoted not to impressing you, but rather to housing a very diverse set of interior functions and, at the same time, organizing the campus around it." (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2008/02/09/solving_an_ide...)
This is great (a little low
This is great (a little low density but I am sure anything over 4 stories would throw people into conniptions about Boston becoming Manhattan) but what will Mayor Wynn think, will he allow this, it might make it harder for the hordes of seniors to drive to his casino.
It's near the T, but...
It's near the T, but without more Orange Line service, it's just going to mean more people who can't fit into the train.
"Knit together"
I think this is a good transit-oriented development, but it's not going to "knit together" anything as long as it's on the other side of a highway (Rutherford Ave) from the rest of the neighborhood.