Image courtesy of the MBTA
Plans for housing on the large parking lot next to the MBTA’s Riverside Green Line terminal have come back to life.
The transit agency’s board of directors Thursday morning gave T officials the go-ahead to ink a revised deal with Newton-based Mark Development that will see the latter’s 13-acre original mixed-use proposal split into two phases.
The prior iteration of Mark Development’s Riverside proposal would have been anchored by a large lab tower alongside 550 apartments, but the collapse of demand for new life science space forced the company to ask the T for an extension to its earlier development agreement last year.
“The life sciences development hasn’t improved at all [since then], so we’ve been reconsidering the development with the developers,” MBTA Chief Real Estate Officer Richard Henderson told the board.
The T, Henderson said, was trying to help use its real estate to create much-needed housing, create more parking spaces at the Riverside station, leave space to rebuild the station facilities to make room for longer Green Line trains planned in the future and to find a way to close a financing gap Mark Development faced while still earning the planned original per-square-foot rent from its Riverside property.
Under the new plan, according to Henderson’s presentation, the first phase will see Mark Development built three buildings totaling about 545 homes on the western end of the Newton site, plus a garage that will be split between residents and MBTA commuters.
The proposed deal with the T would mean Mark Development would need to get this phase though the city of Newton’s notoriously laborious permitting process by Aug. 31, 2026, with the ground-lease deal between Mark Development and the T closing on Feb. 1, 2027.
The T will earn rent from the project on a per-square-foot basis, with Mark Development paying for a minimum 175,000 square feet of development on the development’s first phase.
The developer will retain a right to build a second phase including a 150,000-square-foot office-lab building, 100 more homes and a second, 218-spot garage for Green Line riders, Henderson said, but would have to permit that by Aug. 31, 2028 to retain those rights.
