Image courtesy of Hacin Architects
A lot next to Boston’s Rose Kennedy Greenway that’s sat improbably empty for years is now set to be filled with a 12-story condominium development.
Arkansas-based commercial real estate finance titan Bank OZK is providing the main construction loan for 55 India St., with Hickory CRE providing mezzanine financing that brought the total package to $90 million, developer Boston Residential Group said in a statement, although no mortgage has yet been filed in the Suffolk Registry of Deeds.
An LLC owned by Douglas Elliman Boston CEO Kevin Ahearn originally secured BPDA permission for a 44-unit project on the site in 2014, but never broke ground and Boston Residential Group re-proposed the project in January 2020 with the same massing but two-thirds the number of units, city records show. The Boston Planning & Development Agency board approved the development in early March 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down Massachusetts. Boston Residential Group’s notable projects include the 360 Newbury condo block over the MBTA’s Hynes Convention Center Green Line Station.
“We are thrilled to be moving ahead with the development plan for 55 India, which includes providing home ownership opportunities for the artist community,” Boston Residential Group President and CEO Curtis R. Kemeny said in a statement. “The market conditions for construction costs and financing have been an obstacle to construction starts post-COVID, but the downtown Boston condominium market, including the waterfront and directly adjacent Seaport area, is under-supplied and has never been stronger.”
The 76,000-square-foot block designed by Hacin Architects will include 29 condos, split between five one- and two-bedroom affordable artist live-work units and 24 two- and three-bedroom market-rate condos. Amenities will include a 4,000-square-foot ground-floor restaurant space, 30 owned parking spots in an existing garage next door.
The development “demonstrates our confidence in downtown Boston and is representative of the City of Boston’s commitment to support projects that contribute to Mayor [Michelle] Wu’s agenda to spur residential development downtown,” Kemeny said.
The project will rise on a site that was once part of the Charles Bulfinch-designed India Wharf, one of many busy wharf-warehouse combinations that lined the old Shawmut Peninsula before land-reclamation projects extended the shoreline 550 feet away from the site. Nothing today remains of the once-imposing, 7-story brick building after much of it was demolished to build the Central Artery in the 1950s. Since that elevated freeway was demolished at the start of this century, the roughly triangular parcel at 55 India St. has been a parking lot.
“Our building reconnects the iconic Custom House Tower with the Greenway and, in turn, the waterfront, completing the last piece of the puzzle envisioned by city planners for the Greenway,” Kemeny said.
It’s not yet known how BRG will price the units at 55 India St., but the most recent sales at the 110 Broad St. condo building next door, a broadly similar, 40-unit building completed in 2018, range between $1,239.46 per square foot for a third-floor unit sold in April of this year and $1,309.77 per square foot for a ninth-floor unit sold last August.
An architectural rendering shows the planned 55 India St. condominium building (center) next to the 110 Broad St. condo building (left) facing the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Image courtesy of Hacin Architects
