Fenway?s home run derby: Property owners swing for fences
By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
Monday, April 23, 2007 - Updated: 08:19 AM EST
How much is a tiny gas station next door to Fenway Park worth?
According to one of its owners, Charlie Giannakopoulos, its true value is more than $10 million.
The Shell station at the corner of Boylston and Ipswich streets is the latest piece of real estate to hit the sales block amid a wave of development remaking the neighborhood around the 1912 ballpark.
The Giannakopoulos family, which owns the station, has been testing the market - hoping to cash in on a heated competition for property around Fenway between the Red Sox and high-powered condo developers, real estate executives said.
?If you see what is going on around here, it has some value,? Giannakopoulos told the Herald. ?Everything is being developed.?
Some hard-nosed real estate executives are scoffing at the price. Still, it is also seen by some as another sign of the changes sweeping through the neighborhood, transforming it from an area of bars, clubs and souvenir shops to high-end condos and restaurants.
When gas station owners are dreaming of $10 million jackpots, it almost ensures that any housing built there will have to be expensive luxury condos, said Carl Nagy Koechlin, executive director of the Fenway Community Development Corp.
The nonprofit, which has a track record of building affordable housing in the neighborhood, has had difficulty landing sites to build on as property values have skyrocketed.
?That kind of crazy price, it doesn?t bode well for the future of affordable housing and housing of a reasonable scale,? Nagy Koechlin said.
Not far down Boylston Street from Fenway Shell, Trilogy, a high-end rental high-rise, opened last year. Now another big condo complex is in the works, with a third project in the planning.
The infusion of upscale residences - along a key street near Fenway long dominated by gas stations and fast food joints - is the work of developers Steve Samuels and Bill McQuillan.
Other developers are also nursing residential proposals of their own as they scout out possible property deals.
Fearful that antique Fenway would be swamped by a wave of new high-rise construction, the Sox, with the help of financier John Henry?s deep-pocketed ownership group, are fighting back.
The team has been buying up property around the park, sometimes even teaming up with neighboring property owners to fend off development moves. The team, for example, landed a deal for a Boylston Street McDonald?s that had been on the market for more than $10 million.
This frenzy of property trading has not gone unnoticed at Fenway Shell, whose longtime operators bought the station a year ago for $4 million from the parent company.
Now they are looking to sell for even more, and claim they are in talks with a prospective buyer.
?It all depends on the price,? Giannakopoulos said.
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