Boston officials approved a controversial proposal by Equity Residential to build 470 apartments on the site of the 650-space Garden Garage in the West End.

The 44-story tower at 35 Lomasney Way will become the city’s second-tallest apartment building, trailing the 45-story Government Center garage residential tower set to break ground this spring.

In 2011, Equity Residential filed plans to build two residential towers topping out at 310 and 240 feet containing 500 housing units with an 850-space underground garage. After neighbors including residents of the Amy Lowell Apartments objected to the height and density of the development, Equity Residential submitted revised plans in October 2014 for a single 465-foot-tall tower containing 486 units. It reduced the parking allotment from 850 to 830 spaces and finally to 775 spaces.

After tabling a vote at its previous meeting, the Boston Redevelopment Authority board of directors voted in favor of the project, now reduced by another 16 units, on Thursday.

As conditions of approval, Equity Residential will pay $8 million to satisfy affordable housing creation goals under the city’s inclusionary development policy. It also will contribute $1 million for transportation improvements in the neighborhood.

The development has reopened old wounds in the West End, where some residents still lament the slum clearance schemes of the late 1950s that razed thousands of tenements to make way for master-planned housing projects and highways. At a ceremony last fall launching a new West End Museum exhibit on urban renewal, BRA Director Brian Golden apologized to residents for the agency’s past conduct.

The Garden Garage project is part of an 8-million-square-foot wave of development transforming the neighborhoods around North Station and the Bulfinch Triangle.

Boston-based Trinity Financial is nearing completion of One Canal, a 12-story, 320-unit apartment complex on a parcel leased from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation at Canal and New Chardon streets.

AvalonBay Communities is expected to complete its 38-story, 503-unit Avalon North Station tower next to the TD Garden by year’s end.

Boston-based Related Beal broke ground this month on a 220-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel and 239-unit workforce housing project on land leased from MassDOT at Causeway and Beverly streets.

And after gaining final city approvals last month, HYM Investment Group and National Real Estate Advisors are set to begin construction this spring of a 45-story, 486-unit apartment tower in the first phase of the $1.5 billion Government Center Garage redevelopment.