150 Kneeland Street | Chinatown

shmessy said:
Page 2 lists " This strategy will target deeply affordable housing units at 30% and 50% Area Median Income (AMI). "

The letter on Page 8 enumerates those units at 20.

I had never heard the term "deeply affordable" before. Learning something new every day.
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You see that a lot in developments in Chinatown. The income level of many recent immigrants in Chinatown is much lower than the "affordable" index for Boston , so there is often a target for very low income affordability (low % of AMI) in Chinatown.
 
BeeLine said:
All Gone!! That was fast. A couple of weeks ago when I walked by there wasn't even a construction fence.

IMG_5692 by Bos Beeline, on Flickr
IMG_5694 by Bos Beeline, on Flickr
IMG_5695 by Bos Beeline, on Flickr
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Excellent -- thanks Beeline! The last update on this project was when the Zoning Board of Appeal gave the developer an extra year to start building this because the Hudson Group needed more time to find financing (a quote from them: "In the current market [Covid], it's not possible to get a construction loan," Wiest said; credit to jpdivola for their original post several months ago]
 
Approved by ZBA:

www.universalhub.com

22-story condo building approved for Kneeland Street near South Station

The Zoning Board of Appeal today approved plans for a 115-unit condo building at the site of a former nightclub at 150 Kneeland St. that will be "fully electric" and which will mean the development of 20 units of "deeply affordable" apartments on Oxford Street. Read more.
www.universalhub.com www.universalhub.com
 
Some back of the envelope math here about how self-defeating the City's IZ policy is here:

5-7M is the aff housing contribution to the Oxford St building.

City property taxes on 115 condos are going to be well over 1M per year.

Boston could *easily* either just pay the aff housing subsidy out of general revenues or bond out the property from this building and help it get started. Instead we lose affordable housing, market rate housing, and 1M+ yearly of property taxes!
 
curcuas said:
Some back of the envelope math here about how self-defeating the City's IZ policy is here:

5-7M is the aff housing contribution to the Oxford St building.

City property taxes on 115 condos are going to be well over 1M per year.

Boston could *easily* either just pay the aff housing subsidy out of general revenues or bond out the property from this building and help it get started. Instead we lose affordable housing, market rate housing, and 1M+ yearly of property taxes!
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The city needs some sort of sliding scale for affordable housing requirements- in prosperous economic times its higher and when the economy is struggling there would be lower thresholds.
 
IZ is a bad system, full stop. It was created in the 70s to block any new housing in places like Berkeley. That said, it can serve useful integration ends, if properly compensated for with density bonuses.

All that is immaterial given today's policies, though, which require flexibility and sliding scales.
 
The current mayor is really focused on IZ rather than on housing creation. I think it makes good headlines? It's odd because she has another goal of increasing population--which really can't happen until we get a lot more housing built at all levels (mostly missing middle)
 
DwnTwnr said:
The current mayor is really focused on IZ rather than on housing creation. I think it makes good headlines? It's odd because she has another goal of increasing population--which really can't happen until we get a lot more housing built at all levels (mostly missing middle)
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The trick is figuring out how much the city can push developers without them running away, its rather obvious the city was open for business during Walsh- was this the proper or did he give away too much? The economy hasnt entirely cooperated since Wu has been in office to blame her for the lack of economic development but the longer it goes with a dearth of proposals the more it seems she's at fault.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
The trick is figuring out how much the city can push developers without them running away, its rather obvious the city was open for business during Walsh- was this the proper or did he give away too much? The economy hasnt entirely cooperated since Wu has been in office to blame her for the lack of economic development but the longer it goes with a dearth of proposals the more it seems she's at fault.
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Yes, the economy is certainly not helping. It will be interesting to see if the Fed drops interest rates (starting to see signs) and whether that starts to impact changes.

But the city could have policies that encourage more housing development and it doesn't. People I know who work in City Hall report that the Mayor was told her IZ proposal would kill housing development in the city (based on similar experiences in other cities) but she and her advisors went ahead with it anyway.
 
DwnTwnr said:
Yes, the economy is certainly not helping. It will be interesting to see if the Fed drops interest rates (starting to see signs) and whether that starts to impact changes.

But the city could have policies that encourage more housing development and it doesn't. People I know who work in City Hall report that the Mayor was told her IZ proposal would kill housing development in the city (based on similar experiences in other cities) but she and her advisors went ahead with it anyway.
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I don't think I have seen a policy proposal that would get housing developed that is suitable for the full range of Bostonians.
 
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