Tai Tung Village Expansion | 288 Harrison Avenue | Chinatown

J

JeffDowntown

Senior Member
Joined
May 28, 2007
Messages
4,558
Reaction score
3,189
[url}http://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects/288-harrison-avenue[/URL]

ROI filed by Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New England, Inc. and Beacon Communities LLC (“Proponent”) for the construction of a six story building on the south parking lot of Tai Tung Village residential development. The proposed building will contain 85 affordable rental units, ground floor non-residential space and ground floor/surface parking for approximately 40 vehicles. All of the dwelling units will be rented to households earning 60% or less of the area median income.
 
6 stories./(pre-Galered) on arrival wtf. A crap lot along 2 freeways.
Should be 15, 18, or even 24 stories/Radian height right up to the 300' FAA.
How does low-rise planning abutting freeways close near the Downtown
realm serve Boston in a substantive way?
 
Last edited:
odurandina said:
6 stories./(pre-Galered) on arrival wtf. A crap lot lot along 2 freeways.
Should be 15, 18, or even 24 stories/Radian height right up to the 300' FAA.
How does low-rise planning abutting freeways close near the Downtown
realm serve Boston in a substantive way?
Click to expand...
Well, wave your magic wand and come up with a financing scheme for an affordable housing tower that doesn't take a decade to put together!

The best recent example was One Greenway/66 and 88 Hudson Street, which took the Asian Community Development Corporation about a decade to pull together at roughly 50% affordable component.
 
Nicely done. Your post is a lot more thoughtful than the previous. Revenue from millions of sq ft of development should be able to provide the means by which small developments at key sites can be scaled up to "Serenity" scale or larger with a strong % of affordable units per x number of months/years in the City.
With a number of projects like 1 Charlestown stalled by the process, perhaps we should be asking more questions about where the hell all the money is going to fund affordable housing where it is desperately needed. The size of this project raises many questions, if it isn't a red flag.
1 thing i sometimes wonder about: In the case that Boston should successfully deliver 50~60,000 housing units by 2030--if the greatest effort isn't being made to build to proper scale at sites so close to places of work (such as this)--but instead, become the next opportunity lost--how many housing units will be built at proper density vs how much sprawl? And just what will be possible 10 years from now, from 2030 and 2040?
The mandate and responsibility to bring the money, and partnerships that results in the appropriate-scale of building resides squarely at the BPDA. It's great that this parking lot will go. But, this also happens to be a dead stump that indeed, screams for taller scale. imo, the Planning Authority botched the New York Streets, creating mid-rise sprawl. Maybe the NY Streets should have gone taller and taken 20 years to build. What was the rush to fill every lot? This is my thinking for how they botched the NY Streets, and they're in the process of screwing up this one too.
 
Last edited:
I agree this project should be larger. But zoning isn't limiting that, financial reality is. And the local community would welcome a larger project (if it could get financing to be built -- a larger fantasy project that never materializes is not welcome).

Even in the NY Streets, the zoning is not the ultimate limiter there. The developer at the Ink Block, for example, chose (for financial reasons, I assume) not to use the full height and FAR available.

I don't know the answer, but zoning/planning alone does not fix this problem.

{Side note, for what it is worth, BPDA has done exactly the kind of orchestration you are suggesting with 290 Tremont Street, Parcel 12C. It is a huge effort to pull together multiple major stakeholders in a 350 ft. mixed hotel, 100% affordable residential, garage, community space-library tower. It is also facing a real uphill battle in finding financing given all the stakeholders in the mix, and the 100% affordable residential. I really don't know how much mandate or bandwidth BPDA has to perform that type of market manipulation orchestration. That project is just at LOI stage as well.)
 
Last edited:
Yes & yes.
i too checked on it the other day--and was kind of taken aback to see it crawling along.
 
Mixing in a bunch of market rate to build more affordable sounds a lot easier than the P12 mix, though.
 
That parking ratio seems awfully high given its proximity to downtown and the T, especially since the building is targeted at 60% AMI households.

MAPC data has shown that parking utilization is much lower in developments where over 50% of units are deed-restricted affordable; usually only around ~50% of available off-street spaces are used during peak hours overnight. And this is a 100% restricted project at 60% AMI? These people are not going to need 40 parking spaces.
 
#bancars said:
That parking ratio seems awfully high given its proximity to downtown and the T, especially since the building is targeted at 60% AMI households.

MAPC data has shown that parking utilization is much lower in developments where over 50% of units are deed-restricted affordable; usually only around ~50% of available off-street spaces are used during peak hours overnight. And this is a 100% restricted project at 60% AMI? These people are not going to need 40 parking spaces.
Click to expand...
The parking is not just for the new development, it is also replacing the parking being taken for the development. This is being proposed to take a big chunk of the existing surface parking for all of Tai Tung Village. I don't have the exact numbers, but the overall parking ratio for the entire complex is pretty low, even with this parking (and I don't believe this increases the overall ratio).
 
I too am wondering where all the money contributed by developers over the last handful of years to help fund affordable housing in other areas have gone/is going.. I'm not very educated on the matter, but perhaps someone else here is. I figure this is project would be a great example of where some of that funding should go towards and to make it larger as some have suggested.
 
The building permit has been granted for this as of 12/1/22.

It looks like in the original documents and renders that this will be a standard 5-over-1 on a slab foundation with the 1st floor (facing Hudson Street) being parking, with the entrance at a comparable location to the existing lot entrance:
1670519480566.png


I noticed that this and other nearby recent projects (thinking of 88 Hudson by the same contractor, the Josiah Quincy Upper School under construction, and the proposals for both parcels P-12 and R-1) also have zero/minimal use of below-grade spaces and are relatively low-rise. In R-1 the lack of basement was explicitly discussed as due to being in a flood zone and I believe the height was restricted due to zoning, though the adjacent 75 Kneeland and One Greenway buildings are taller:
1670519789333.png
1670520208874.png


However, the same flooding risks are the case in the Seaport, and the solution employed there is to use the subterranean parking lots as a flooding mitigation measure while elevating essential utilities. Residential parking is a perennial concern for Chinatown residents as well as Tufts Medical Center, and of course housing density needs to improve. Is the lack of basement utilization in Chinatown for parking, as well as the limited building height, a missed opportunity to utilize space in the downtown core for higher-density residential usages? The adjacent Pike air rights parcels may be easier to develop 4-6 story buildings on than taller towers due to the required decking, while the terra firma parking lots like this could be used to develop something more in the 350-400' range (per FAA maps).

Some of the above comments discuss financing issues. However, developments in this same neighborhood like One Greenway or the Metropolitan complex can use market-rate units to subsidize on-site affordable housing. In addition, projects like P-12 were supposed to capitalize on funding from nearby stakeholders as well as Millennium Tower's affordable housing contributions. The addition of multi-story parking garages such as under One Greenway can also help financing - so these all seem to be resolvable problems. Building a small structure like this on a vacant lot locks in this minimal site usage for maybe a century.
 
Last edited:
MjolnirMan said:
The building permit has been granted for this as of 12/1/22.

It looks like in the original documents and renders that this will be a standard 5-over-1 on a slab foundation with the 1st floor (facing Hudson Street) being parking, with the entrance at a comparable location to the existing lot entrance:
View attachment 31519

I noticed that this and other nearby recent projects (thinking of 88 Hudson by the same contractor, the Josiah Quincy Upper School under construction, and the proposals for both parcels P-12 and R-1) also have zero/minimal use of below-grade spaces and are relatively low-rise. In R-1 the lack of basement was explicitly discussed as due to being in a flood zone and I believe the height was restricted due to zoning, though the adjacent 75 Kneeland and One Greenway buildings are taller:
View attachment 31520View attachment 31521

However, the same flooding risks are the case in the Seaport, and the solution employed there is to use the subterranean parking lots as a flooding mitigation measure while elevating essential utilities. Residential parking is a perennial concern for Chinatown residents as well as Tufts Medical Center, and of course housing density needs to improve. Is the lack of basement utilization in Chinatown for parking, as well as the limited building height, a missed opportunity to utilize space in the downtown core for higher-density residential usages? The adjacent Pike air rights parcels may be easier to develop 4-6 story buildings on than taller towers due to the required decking, while the terra firma parking lots like this could be used to develop something more in the 350-400' range (per FAA maps).
Click to expand...
My understanding is that some of the lack of basement levels is due to lack of available funding for these types of affordable housing structures. Basement levels, given the local water table, are pretty expensive to build. (You also have to build the lower levels properly otherwise you put the neighboring row houses at risk -- dewatering the ground, exposing the pilings to air). That is also part of the limitation in height, simply insufficient funds to finance a larger building. Market rate Seaport buildings are a totally different real estate financing animal. The community does not object to height (unlike other parts of Boston).

The Metropolitan, 1 Nassau Street, does have basement parking levels in a mixed income building. (The lower parking level has notorious water intrusion issues).
 
JeffDowntown said:
My understanding is that some of the lack of basement levels is due to lack of available funding for these types of affordable housing structures. Basement levels, given the local water table, are pretty expensive to build. (You also have to build the lower levels properly otherwise you put the neighboring row houses at risk -- dewatering the ground, exposing the pilings to air). That is also part of the limitation in height, simply insufficient funds to finance a larger building. Market rate Seaport buildings are a totally different real estate financing animal. The community does not object to height (unlike other parts of Boston).

The Metropolitan, 1 Nassau Street, does have basement parking levels in a mixed income building. (The lower parking level has notorious water intrusion issues).
Click to expand...

What are the financing challenges here that would make a larger project infeasible at these parcels, say 300-400 feet? I would think people would be lining up to build on terra firma in Boston's urban core considering the market rates are up there with NYC/SF. Is it construction costs? Lack of access to capital? Appreciate any insight.
 
JeffDowntown said:
The Metropolitan, 1 Nassau Street, does have basement parking levels in a mixed income building. (The lower parking level has notorious water intrusion issues).
Click to expand...

Ha, I think I edited my post to include a postscript about this while you were writing this reply. There is also the One Greenway garage that sits under the superbuilding consisting of 99 Kneeland (market rate rentals) and 66 Hudson (affordable rentals). As odurandina said above in 2019, the market-rate Radian is a similar footprint to this space and at the same basic height allowed here by FAA zoning, while having an underground garage off of Kingston St.

E: Actually, you could fit almost 2 Radians on this same plot. At this point I wouldn't say no to doing the math on building 100% luxury - across the street from Ink Block, amazing panoramic views - in order to finance decking the Pike nearby with lower-rise affordable or mixed units. Twofer of adding significant housing of all income levels as well as helping to mitigate highway pollution.
 
SuffolkHeights11 said:
What are the financing challenges here that would make a larger project infeasible at these parcels, say 300-400 feet? I would think people would be lining up to build on terra firma in Boston's urban core considering the market rates are up there with NYC/SF. Is it construction costs? Lack of access to capital? Appreciate any insight.
Click to expand...
They are building affordable housing, not market rate luxury buildings. It is really challenging to cobble together enough mix of grants (very few), affordable housing transfer payments (from other market rate projects), affordable tax incentives, and some market rate housing to top off the mix. It takes ACDC, one of the more skilled community development agencies, about a decade per project to glue together financing. They did Oak Terrace, The Metropolitan and One Greenway, each in a separate decade. They were the lead on 290 Tremont Street, which was to be a 33 story mostly affordable housing building, until the Winthrop Center development got cut back, reducing the transfer payment below the level to have the building financing work.
 
JeffDowntown said:
They are building affordable housing, not market rate luxury buildings. It is really challenging to cobble together enough mix of grants (very few), affordable housing transfer payments (from other market rate projects), affordable tax incentives, and some market rate housing to top off the mix. It takes ACDC, one of the more skilled community development agencies, about a decade per project to glue together financing. They did Oak Terrace, The Metropolitan and One Greenway, each in a separate decade. They were the lead on 290 Tremont Street, which was to be a 33 story mostly affordable housing building, until the Winthrop Center development got cut back, reducing the transfer payment below the level to have the building financing work.
Click to expand...
Also wanted to comment that CCBA (Owners of Tai Tung Village) initially had visions of a larger building at 288 Harrison. But that vision hit financing reality and they scaled back to a 5 over 1 structure.
 
Feels like they're building something just to build something.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top