Lobster company's prime site on waterfront put up for sale
By Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff | March 20, 2009
One of the city's prime waterfront tracts, home for decades to one of the nation's oldest lobster businesses, is up for sale.
Jimmy Hook, one of four brothers who own James Hook & Co., said the family plans to sell its downtown property after a fire nearly destroyed the business last May.
"I'd like to utilize the property better and get what it's worth," Hook said inside the shop yesterday, leaning on a lobster tank. "It's a beautiful spot.
It is undecided whether the Hook brothers' lobster business, a fixture on Atlantic Avenue since 1925, will remain on the site. Hook said he and his brothers are considering all their options.
"We'd like to keep the business here, but you never know," Hook said.
The Hook lobster company is a vestige of another era downtown, harkening back to the days when Boston's waterfront had more fishing boats than luxury condos. The family business thrived even as towering office buildings and luxury hotels sprouted around it. Even though the Hook company does a massive international business and keeps more than 300,000 pounds of lobster a year on hand for sale, the Hooks said they wanted to maintain a homespun feel, selling lobster rolls to lunch crowds and inviting customers to eat them at picnic tables outside.
Those days may be drawing to a close. Ten developers have submitted proposals for construction projects at the site, according to the family's real estate broker, Sandy Tierney of McCall & Almy.
Hook family members and Tierney declined to disclose the names of interested developers or the asking price for the property.
The assessed value of the land, according to city records, is $1.77 million.
Tierney said the Hook brothers will probably select one proposal within a month.
"The Hooks are committed to retaining a presence there," Tierney said. "They may have to temporarily move away during construction, but their goal is to remain on this site and to have it continue to be identified as the site of the James Hook lobster company. They've been here a long time, and they'd like to stay."
Al and Jimmy Hook said the family had no desire to sell the land until last year, when a massive early-morning fire ravaged the business, destroying more than 60,000 pounds of live lobster and the buildings that housed them.
When the fire was brought under control, what remained of the business's distinctive tin-topped building was charred and singed and had to be razed. About a month later, city fire officials, with assistance from the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, said the cause of the blaze was probably electrical, although an exact determination could not be made.
The brothers said at the time they wanted to rebuild. But after the fire, Tierney said, they were besieged with offers for their land.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority helped the company set up in offices in the nearby Marine Industrial Park. Eventually the brothers reopened their retail business in two trailers they had moved onto the Atlantic Avenue site.
The setup has not changed. The trailers sit in the shadow of the towering 1 International Place skyscraper.
Hook's next-door neighbor to the west is Independence Wharf, a 14-story luxury office building. And the gleaming glass Intercontinental Hotel, 21-stories, including seven floors of luxury condos, sits nearby.
Kairos Shen the BRA's chief of planning, said zoning laws drafted when the expressway stood there prohibit construction more than 55 feet high at the Hook location, although those rules can be appealed by property owners. In an interview yesterday, Shen called the Hook site "a very, very special location." A review board working with the BRA has hired several private consultants to undertake a study of Greenway zoning that will include creating new rules for development at the Hook site.
Citing the parcel's proximity to the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, Shen said that the BRA does not want to see towering buildings block the sun from the park and that the city will not allow the park to be compromised by "private development interests."
"It's a critical asset the city needs to cherish," Shen said.
It was a thought echoed by customers yesterday.
Maureen Daly, who works at a nearby Verizon office, went to Hook's to pick up two lobsters to bring to friends in Florida this morning. She said she would be crushed if the Hooks moved.
"I want them to stay," she said. "It's the best lobster in all of Boston. It's the freshest and the sweetest tasting."
Co-worker Ellen Paress said she wanted to see the Hooks rebuild a restaurant at the site, something similar to the casual shack they lost.
"When you get too big," she said, "you lose some of that family feel."
Megan Woolhouse can be reached at
mwoolhouse@globe.com.
