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The Boston Planning Department has received its first-ever application for an office-to-residential conversion in the Back Bay.
The applicant: an LLC owned by neighborhood landlord Hicham Ali Hassan.
Hassan wants to turn 419 Boylston St., an 8-story, 1899-vintage mixed-use building probably best known as the longtime home of a Pompanoosuc Mills furniture store, into 44 apartments.
The city says it’s now received 17 applications to convert 22 buildings to from offices to residences. That’s taking roughly 655,000 square feet of office space off the market and creating 824 new homes, including 150 affordable units.
Floors three through eight of the 44,008-square-foot building would be reconfigured into 36 studio apartments and eight one-bedrooms. Eight units – 17 percent of the total – would be set aside as affordable housing. Market-rate rents would range from $3,000 to $3,750, the application states.
The unmodified stores would remain “as existing,” the application states, used for retail space and storage.
The sparsely-worded application states there’s one current tenant in the office space proposed for conversion, but it’s not clear what type of lease it’s operating under.
Hassan wrote that he’d seek $2.29 million in state and federal historic tax credits on top of the 29-year tax abatement incentive program set up by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. That city tax credit would generate $196,875 in annual savings, the application states.
The application adds that Hassan will seek a $1.72 million “State Housing Grant,” likely a reference to $15 million from the state Affordable Housing Trust fund set aside by Gov. Maura Healey for office-to-residential conversions. However, that pot of money requires projects to be at least 70,000 square feet in size.
At least $4 million worth of state grants have already been promised to Dinosaur Capital Partners for a 110-unit project on Milk Street in downtown, plus another $3.4 million to KS Partners’ 80-unit project at 15 Court Square.
The Healey administration also recently announced guidelines for a separate $10 million tax credit program for office-to-residential conversions statewide. State housing officials said last week that conversions with 50 or more units will receive priority.
Hassan’s application estimates total construction cost at $7,637,888.
Banker & Tradesman’s efforts to contact Hassan for comment were unsuccessful.
