A rendering of Dinosaur Capital Partners' proposal for a 130-unit, 5-story apartment at 7 Hartwell Ave. in Lexington.

Boston-based Dinosaur Capital Partners is seeking to build a 130-unit, 5-story apartment at 7 Hartwell Ave. in Lexington. Image courtesy of ICON Architecture

Lexington officials are set to review developers’ proposals this week for projects that would generate a combined 201 new housing units in office parks and commercial districts.

The dramatic increase in multifamily housing proposals has followed the town’s approval of new zoning to comply with the MBTA Communities law in 2023, and a mixed-use zoning district in office parks near Route 128 in 2021.

Boston-based Dinosaur Capital Partners is seeking to build a 130-unit, 5-story apartment complex at 7 Hartwell Ave., which contains a 2-story office building owned by the Newton-based Russian School of Mathematics. The Lexington Planning Board will open a public hearing on the project at Thursday’s meeting.

Another hearing will resume on a 44-unit, 5-story development at 217-241 Massachusetts Ave. by Woburn-based North Shore Residential Development. The first project proposed in East Lexington’s new village overlay district, the project would replace a small office building, contractor’s yard and a pair of residential buildings.

And Lexington-based Beacon Point Development proposes a 3-story, 25-unit apartment building on a small commercial property at 185 Bedford St.

Under the MBTA Communities law, Lexington has approved 576 housing units in four separate projects to date.

The largest project was approved in December at 17 Hartwell Ave., where Boston-based BXP plans to build a 312-unit apartment building, a 2,100 square-foot retail building and a 361-space parking garage. The project will replace a single-story office-lab building and surface parking.

Another 200-unit project in a 4-story building was approved in November at 331 Concord Ave. Boston-based Cabot, Cabot & Forbes is redeveloping the 6.2-acre site, which is currently occupied by a landscaping business and duplex.

A public hearing on Cambridge-based SGL Development’s proposal to replace three buildings at 3, 4 and 5 Militia Drive with a 319-unit apartment complex is scheduled to resume on March 5.

The proposals come as the office market in the northern third of the Route 128 corridor hit a combined availability rate of 21.1 percent and the western third hit 26.6 percent, according to research by commercial brokerage Avison Young.

Commercial-to-Housing Redevelopments Gain Momentum in Lexington

by Steve Adams time to read: 1 min
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