South Huntington Ave Infill and Small Projects

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PaulC

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Re: 105 South Huntington Ave.

Another project
http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/2012/03/30/apartment-project-plan-is-filed/


S. HUNTINGTON AVE.—The high-end apartment building proposed for the Home for Little Wanderers site will have about 196 units and stand 65 feet tall, according to a plan filed this week with the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA).

The Home is moving out of its three-building complex at 161 S. Huntington Ave. this year. Boston Residential Group wants to demolish all of the buildings and erect a new, 190,000-square-foot apartment building.

The plan says the building would have one- and two-bedroom units and various amenities, including a “fitness center and concierge.” It would have a blocky, modern design and be built in two connected parts, one four stories high and the other five stories. Twenty-six units would be rented at “affordable” rates.



There would be 170 on-site parking spaces, with 154 of them in a partially underground garage.

The project requires significant zoning variances, including for height, density and open space per unit. It also needs approval for its size under the Greenbelt Overlay Protect District that covers the property due its closeness to the Jamaicaway parkway and Olmsted Park. The developers previous said the project would require rezoning of the site, but the filing says that only variances are required.

The developer is aiming for a LEED-certified building, meaning it would be significantly energy-efficient. It would have bicycle storage and possibly a site for the car-share company Zipcar. The plan claims the project would have little shadow impact on the adjacent parkway and park.

The project will be subjected to several public meetings. If all goes well, the developer aims to start building late this year, with construction lasting 18 months.

The BRA is forming an Impact Advisory Group (IAG) to review any mitigations for the project’s neighborhood impacts in terms of design or traffic. The final membership list includes: Dave Baron, Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council; Red Burrows, Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council; Jennifer Flaata, Goddard House; Pat Flaherty, Mission Hill Neighborhood Housing Services; Kay Gallagher, Back of the Hill Community Development Corporation;* Claudio Martinez, Hyde Square Task Force; Kevin Moloney, Jamaica Pond Association; John Papson, Jamaica Pond Assocation; Michael Reiskind, resident; Patrick Stapleton, Sherrill House; Joe Silva, MSPCA; and Merlin Southwick, Mount Pleasant Home.
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Re: 105 South Huntington Ave.

PaulC said:
Another project
http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/2012/03/30/apartment-project-plan-is-filed/
Click to expand...

HLW.jpg


The orientation is utterly suburban and introverted, with the building separated from the sidewalk by a buffer zone of driveways and parking lots lined with pretty flora. If we want to transform this stretch of South Huntington from the wasteland it is today to a desirable, walkable neighborhood this is not the way.
 
Re: 105 South Huntington Ave.

Agreed. And not sure why they would have a mid-block curb cut when they have a signaled intersection 30 feet away.
 
Re: 105 South Huntington Ave.

The parking should be in back with a small garden in the front. Just like all the other mid rise prewar buildings on South Huntington.
 
Re: 105 South Huntington Ave.

Is this at least replacing a parking lot or is it replacing something genuinely urban?
 
Re: 105 South Huntington Ave.

Preservation group opposes Little Wanderers demolition


The influential Boston Preservation Alliance (BPA) is opposing the plan to demolish the Home for Little Wanderers buildings at 161 S. Huntington Ave. to make way for a 196-unit modern apartment building.

“JP has many fine examples of creative reuse, like the Brewery Complex, that have been embraced by the neighborhood,” wrote Judy Neiswander, the BPA’s advocacy coordinator, in a letter sent today to the Gazette. “Surely a more imaginative solution could be found here as well.”
 
Re: 105 South Huntington Ave.

Could the name of this thread be changed to just 'South Huntington Ave'?


body:
Last hurdles cleared by JPA

S. HUNTINGTON AVE.—Developers hoping to turn the former Pond View Nursing Home into a 39-unit hotel are in negotiations with a management company that could run the hotel as a Comfort Inn franchise.



The plan moved ahead after a Jamaica Pond Association (JPA) board meeting on August 2, when the board voted to not oppose the construction, as long as its list of provisos was adopted.

Steve Chapman, head of SMC Management Corporation, the lead investor and developer of the project, previously told the Gazette he hopes to get zoning approval and begin work by September.
Chapman also said at a July 12 meeting of the JPA that the effort to convert the former nursing home at 81 S. Huntington Ave. would be financed with $5 million of equity.

That means the development team would not take out any loans for the project, Chapman said.

Chapman and Global Vision President Gautaum Sharma were seeking to allay concerns previously expressed by JPA board members and Mission Hill resident Rich Giordano that the project is, as Giordano put it at a June meeting of the JPA board, “speculative.”

Global Vision and Comfort Inn would both have to feel confident about the proposal for it to move forward, Chapman said. The hotel is mainly intended to attract families and individuals visiting the Longwood Medical Area (LMA), the Veterans Administration Medical Center on S. Huntington and the nearby Faulkner Hospital, Chapman said.

“We will have good management and [Comfort Inn] will be a good resource with national prestige,” Chapman told the Gazette after the July meeting.

Giordano did not attend the July meeting and was not available for comment by press time. At the June meeting, he had asked the developer to set up a meeting with the Back of the Hill Community Development Corporation, which operates a 125-unit senior housing development across the street from the site. Chapman said he has sought to set up that meeting, but has so far been unsuccessful.

The hotel management company, Hudson-based Global Vision Hotels, would run the hotel as a Comfort Inn and sign a 10-year lease with the owners, Chapman said.

Parking was a major issue at the June JPA meeting, where a parking consultant made a few proposals for shoehorning up to 14 cars into the site’s nine-space parking area.

At the July meeting, Sharma said Global Vision would offer mandatory valet parking for guests with cars using some of the 9 on-site spaces and an off-site garage. Only about 25 percent of guests at urban hotels arrive by car, so the impact should be minimal, he said. These measures were codified into the proviso list for the August meeting.

Also on the list were restrictions on construction hours to minimize inconveniences to neighbors: the projected twelve-month build would only be active between 7 am and 6 pm, Monday through Friday, and Saturday work would only be allowed with a city building permit. No work will be done on Sunday.

According to Kevin Moloney, head of zoning for the JPA, the final agreement with the developers also includes the stipulations that the exterior for all but the S. Huntington Avenue side will be stucco in earth tone color and that any change in the color scheme or in the proposed signage on the S. Huntington side will be presented to the JPA for its approval prior to instituting any changes.

Brookline resident Ralph Spears, who owns an apartment building at 8-14 S. Huntington Ave., said at the July meeting that most of the patrons of the unrestricted parking on that street are LMA visitors and employees.

To move forward, the hotel will require a number of variances, including for front and side yard area and floor-area-to-lot-size ratio. Hotel operations are also a forbidden use on the property.

The rear of the building overlooks the Jamaicaway.

The developer proposes to add two stories to the existing three-story structure, but that will not bring the building above the maximum allowed height of 45 feet.
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http://jamaicaplaingazette.com/2010/08/13/proposed_new_hotel_could_be_comfort_inn-2/
 
Hmm...I think it's one actually:

If you zoom in, you can sort of make out a sign reading "The Home for Little Wanderers"
 
{Cringes.}

This is another unfortunate piece of evidence that in post-WWII America, you can never bet against Murphy's Law when it comes to development and architecture.

Everything -- everything -- else around this site is crap, a postwar Modernist rectangle. Naturally, the one building that gives the area any humanity whatsoever is what has to go, to be replaced with more of the postwar same. Go figure.
 
itchy said:
{Cringes.}

This is another unfortunate piece of evidence that in post-WWII America, you can never bet against Murphy's Law when it comes to development and architecture.

Everything -- everything -- else around this site is crap, a postwar Modernist rectangle. Naturally, the one building that gives the area any humanity whatsoever is what has to go, to be replaced with more of the postwar same. Go figure.
Click to expand...

Itch -- coming from another planet you might get that impression

But much like the Y way up Huntington -- the Home for Little Wanderers has a piece of property and a mission which no longer are well matched -- the Home doesn't own the other properties

The developer is just taking advantage of the available opportunity -- i.e. a piece of property -- that's the basis of how Boston and the rest of the US got developed
 
^ Right, cos no one was living in North America before the white guys showed up.

If only the developers would invent a new concept, call it Shmoperty, and use it as the basis for invading the VA surface lot across the street...
 
BeeLine said:
Should get a lot of NIMBY responce.
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It certainly will, but it wouldn't actually be that out of place considering the Back of the Hill apts directly across from it on the east side of south huntington.
 
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Oh my god. That is a monster. What do you even call this style other than needs-to-die-already?! This one truly looks like an oversized nuclear cockroach crawling its way down South Huntington to obliterate JP.
 
On the one hand, it seems very out of scale. I mean, even the render can't make it look as though it fits the neighborhood. On the other hand, this is an area that probably should transition to mid-rise density.

But, it's so ridiculously ugly, I just can't get past that as the most important issue.
 
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