This preliminary rendering depicts the 9-story research laboratory, Longwood Center, which has been proposed for the Longwood Medical Area in Boston.
A Newton-based developer has unveiled plans for a 9-story research laboratory in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area (LMA).
If approved by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), National Development would replace a 2-story building, an 83-unit apartment complex and a surface parking lot with a new facility called Longwood Center. The 350,000-square-foot, glass-and-metal tower would serve the Joslin Diabetes Center and other tenants.
“We are the world’s largest diabetes research institution,” Ranch Kimball, Joslin’s president, said last week. “But frankly, we’re jammed when it comes to space. Diabetes is growing at 8 percent a year and we are stuck. This facility is an important step forward in our quest to cure diabetes.”
In addition to the lab space, the campus at Longwood and Brookline avenues would offer 8,400 square feet of ground-level retail and 289 underground parking spaces. The plan also calls for tree plantings and wider sidewalks. Under the plan, a portion of Longwood Avenue and nearby Pilgrim Road would be widened. The road no longer would be a one-way street.
The sprawling LMA campus includes several well-known hospitals, colleges, biomedical research centers and museums. It is home to Harvard Medical School and Harvard-affiliated institutions. The LMA straddles the Fenway, Kenmore and Mission Hill neighborhoods, and is centered along Longwood Avenue between Huntington Avenue and the Riverway.
In 2003, the BRA approved plans for Boston Properties to construct a $225 million, 490,000-square-foot development project that would have included a 30-story residential tower. But construction never began and Kimball did not reveal why the project failed to launch.
Sonal Gandhi, the BRA’s project manager, said the earlier plan did not work for financial reasons. “The BRA is very cognizant of the fact that the market changes,” she said. “This project works financially; it’s a good project, it will get built and there’s a need for lab space here.”
A Joslin spokeswoman told Banker & Tradesman that the parting with Boston Properties was “amicable.”
In November, Joslin sold the parcels to a joint venture of National Development, Alexandria Real Estate Equities and Charles River Realty Investors for $70 million. The proposal does not include housing.
Residents in attendance at last week’s LMA forum had mixed reactions to the new plan.
Marc Laderman, a resident of the Fenway neighborhood, objected to the fact that three apartment buildings will be razed to make way for the R&D campus. “I thought the BRA wanted housing,” he noted. “Where’s the concern about the loss of housing?”
But Edward Lamperti, another Fenway resident, disagreed, saying that luxury housing is not what the area needs. “Residential doesn’t work here,” he said. “Who wants to live with the sounds of emergency vehicles 24/7? Besides, what value does more high-cost housing priced at up to $5,000 per month have for me?”
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening came from Richard Orareo, who has lived in the Fenway for more than 30 years and is a frequent critic of development. “For the first time in an LMA meeting, I don’t have any objections,” he said to thunderous applause.
Longwood Center is one of several projects in the planning stages for the congested LMA. Children’s Hospital has proposed additional upper floors as well as lobby and lower-level expansion to its main building. A Patient Care Center has been proposed to replace the Enders Building for a total increase to the campus of 130,000 square feet over the next decade.
A Children’s Hospital spokeswoman did not return a call seeking comment.
The nearby Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has filed plans with the BRA to expand its facility at 280 The Fenway. The proposal, in the works since 1998, includes a 60,000-square-foot building that would house a performance hall, greenhouses, exhibition space, classrooms, conservation labs, a café and gift shop. The 60-foot-tall building will provide space for visitor services, administrative needs and programming.
“The Gardner is facing urgent challenges to preserve the museum Palace and collection,” said James Labeck, the museum’s director of operations, in an e-mail. “In Mrs. Gardner’s time, 1,000 people visited the museum annually, a figure closer to 200,000 today. A new building is essential to ensuring that the Gardner, and the vibrant programming that keeps its founder’s spirit alive, remain.”
The museum made headlines in 1990 when two men dressed as Boston police officers handcuffed a pair of museum security guards, ripped paintings from the walls and cut masterpieces from their frames. The thieves stole a dozen paintings, including three Rembrandts and a Vermeer, valued at up to $500 million. The daring heist is on the FBI’s Top Ten Art Crimes list.
Among the stolen pieces was the only seascape that Rembrandt ever painted, “Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” and Vermeer’s “The Concert,” one of the most valuable paintings in the Gardner collection.
