Image courtesy of RODE Architects
A South Boston developer has unveiled plans for an apartment building a stone’s throw away from several planned developments in line to radically shape an industrial corner of the neighborhood.
Attorney George Morancy of Adams & Morancy filed filed a project notification form with the Boston Planning & Development Agency last week on behalf of an LLC controlled by Sing Ming Chan, of South Boston, for a 71-unit apartment building with 1,515 square feet of ground-floor retail apace at 49-51 D St. in South Boston.
Chan’s prior developments include a 21-unit residential building in South Boston’s City Point section and a 32-unit mixed residential-commercial building near the D Street project on Old Colony Avenue.
The 9-story building, designed by RODE Architects, includes a 1,355-square-foot pocket park designed by Michael D’Angelo Landscape Architecture that provides outdoor seating for retail users and covers an underground transformer vault.
With the entire site included in the city’s coastal flooding zoning district, Much of the building’s electrical and telecommunications equipment, plus HVAC systems and apartments, will be located above the flood zone.
No car parking is included, with 71 units of bicycle parking included instead on the building’s ground floor, along with other back-of-house uses. Other amenities included in the 73,472-square-foot building called out in plans include the ground-floor retail space, a fitness center and a small outdoor seating area at the rear of the building.
The planned unit mix is nine studios, 32 one-bedroom and 30 two-bedroom units. Of the 71 total units, 12 will be affordable housing.
Morancy wrote that the developer anticipates requiring a conditional use permit for the apartment uses in what’s otherwise an area zoned for industrial uses.
If approved, the building will rise in a neighborhood slated for a substantial transformation from low-rise light industry to high-rise housing and biotech. Major developers Core Investments, National Development, Alexandria Real Estate Equities and HYM Investment Group plan several million square feet of new mixed-use developments, of which Core Investment’s 3.8 million-square-foot On the Dot development is the largest. HYM and Alexandria have yet to file formal plans but both have spent tens of millions of dollars this year buying development sites in the neighborhood.
