The HYM Investment Group today filed plans with the Boston Redevelopment Authority to transform the 43-year-old Government Center Garage into housing, retail, a hotel and new office space, totaling about 2.4 million square feet of commercial space.
Once the proposed project is complete, the 2,300-space garage on approximately 4.8 acres would be transformed into 771 apartments and condos, 1.3 million square feet of office space, 82,500 square feet of retail and restaurant space and 204 hotel rooms.
The new complex at One Congress St. would add about 2.4 million square feet of total commercial space to the downtown area. The plan calls for six new buildings, with towers up to 600 feet, on the west side of Congress Street between New Sudbury and New Chardon streets, and smaller buildings on the eastern parcel near Canal Street and the Greenway. The revised project is more modest in scope than what a previous developer proposed for the site several years ago.
Construction on the first building would likely start by the end of 2014, with a 470-foot apartment building followed by a 600-foot office tower and a third residential building at 275 feet, according to HYM spokesperson Thomas Palmer. In that first phase of the project, the east side of the garage would be demolished, opening that portion of Congress Street to daylight for the first time in nearly 50 years.
Then, three more buildings would likely be built at about the same time on the east parcel near the Rose Kennedy Greenway. Those would include a 275-foot hotel and residential building, a 125-foot office asset and a 60-foot retail structure. Those three would be arranged around a new public plaza to be built around the existing Haymarket station at the edge of the current garage property, with the head house in the middle of the public plaza.
All told, the project will likely take more than 10 years to complete, Palmer said.
The redevelopment would reconnect now-divided neighboring communities including the Bulfinch Triangle, the North End, Government Center, Beacon Hill and the West End.
"Our goal is to take a large, underutilized concrete parking structure that no longer contributes to today’s reinvigorated urban downtown and transform it into a place that residents, companies, their employees, and visitors will embrace as another great Boston destination," Thomas O’Brien, HYM managing director, said in a statement.
Under the plan, which will undergo review by the BRA, about half of the existing garage would remain intact. Those 1,100 spaces on nine levels would be reconfigured for use by residents, office users and the public, and they would be incorporated into new perimeter buildings and active space on the ground level and no longer visible on three sides, according to the statement.
"We have been awaiting the removal of the only remaining barrier between the West End and Downtown Boston," Robert O’Brien, President of Downtown North Association, said in the statement.
The HYM Investment Group is development manager of the project for Bulfinch Congress Holdings, a joint venture of the National Electrical Benefit Fund and The Lewis Trust Group. Bulfinch Congress Holdings purchased the property in 2007 with the primary goal of redeveloping the Garage. The project architect is CBT Architects.
