Old TV tower, radio studios could make way for apartments on Leo Birmingham Parkway in Brighton

A developer has filed plans to replace a building housing radio stations and an antenna tower on Leo Birmingham Parkway across from Lincoln Street in Brighton with an eight-story, 338-unit apartment building.

Bankrupt broadcast chain Audacy, which runs or ran a cluster of radio stations at the site, made $11.1 million selling it to Nordblom Co. of Burlington earlier this year. Audacy is currently paying $40,000 a month to lease the building. The tower is a legacy of the building's days as home for TV-38, WSBK, when it was an independent station and platform for Dana Hersey.

In its filing with the Boston Planning Department, Nordblom says 57 of the units would be rented as affordable. In total, the building, with a series of wings, would have 125 studio, 157 1-bedroom units, 49 2-bedroom units, and 7 3-bedroom apartments.

The building would be all electric, with no gas hookups, and would have 175 parking spaces in an underground garage, according to the filing.

It's the latest development proposal in a once sleepy area of low-rise commercial buildings where Market Streets meets Leo Birmingham Parkway and Soldiers Field Road, all spurred by the development of New Balance's Boston Landing developments along Guest Street.

Trees on the roughly 2-acre site played a key role in determining the site's overall design:

Within the Project boundaries, there is a mature woodland grove on the steeply sloping hillside from Leo M. Birmingham Parkway to Soldiers Field Place. This woodland, an urban wild, consists largely of Norway Maples trees with a smaller percentage of Honey Locusts, Elms, and Ailanthus. Despite the predominantly non-native composition, the grove represents a significant biomass and tree canopy within the urban forest. As such, a primary Project objective is to preserve as much of the existing woodland as possible. Tree removals will be limited to peripheral areas of the site directly impacted by the removal of the existing retaining wall and building and the installation of the proposed building foundations. The critical root zone of the grove exists within the steeply sloped hillside between Market Street and the existing asphalt parking lot on site. The placement and orientation of the building was developed to avoid disturbance of the slope and to increase the permeable surface condition adjacent to the grove.

The sloped area will largely be left untouched to avoid disturbance to the critical root zones of the grove. The proposed tree planting strategy seeks to employ a successional approach of interplanting new native shade and understory species at the base of the slope to diversify the woodland composition. A robust native planting scheme will extend the habitat benefits beyond the woodland edge into all parts of the Project. Along Soldiers Field Place, preserved existing mature Honey Locust trees maintain the streetscape scale and buffer the building from the surrounding uses. One existing private Honey locust tree will be removed to accommodate the building services, however, this tree is in poor condition with a compromised canopy and root system that has overgrown and buckled the existing sidewalk.

Also to be included in the project: Storage basins, porous paving and, in addition to the existing trees, 80 new trees to help act as a sponge during heavy rainfall.

83 Leo Birmingham Parkway filings and meeting/comment schedule.