Image courtesy of RODE Architects
The $90 million Neponset Wharf proposal for waterfront apartments on a Dorchester peninsula was making little progress toward approval from 2017 until 2021 until an upstart firm joined the development team and unveiled a series of changes.
Rise Together, founded in 2020 by a pair of former Suffolk Construction and Massport executives, announced plans to relocate its own headquarters from a neighboring office building to the future development alongside 120 apartments, retail shops and a new boathouse.
But environmental watchdogs and state regulators took a dim view of the nearly 203,000-square-foot proposal, delaying approval.
Noting that portions of the Port Norfolk peninsula are located in a FEMA flood plain, with only two roads leading in and out of the neighborhood, they criticized the developers’ design. Lobbies of two buildings would be designed to let flood waters flow in one side of the ground floor and out the other, known as “wet floodproofing” in building industry jargon. And they questioned whether the project would push more flooding onto neighboring residential properties.
“Putting a residential building on a site that is vulnerable to flooding is undesirable,” said Margaret Sullivan, senior attorney for community resilience at Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. “Without a schedule and funding in place for the city’s resiliency measures, or for the private proponent to somehow physically meet those standards on their own, it’s unacceptable.”
Today the Neponset Wharf development is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A Quincy lender is seeking to foreclose on the property, and two development partners are in a legal squabble over payments to an environmental consultant.
Stalled Development Gains Momentum
Located near the mouth of the Neponset River, Pork Norfolk includes land that was filled in the 19th century to support industrial uses. Buildings that once housed a horseshoe nail factory were converted into other uses ranging from offices to a distillery in recent years.
The four new Neponset Wharf buildings would have replaced boat storage warehouses on a corner of the site steps from the water’s edge. Developer Ryan Sillery of South Boston-based City Point Capital acquired the four Ericsson Street parcels in 2017 for a combined $12.8 million. A 330,000-square-foot development proposal submitted by City Point Capital the same year included a hotel, condominiums and a restaurant but generated neighborhood opposition.
In 2021, the year-old development and construction firm Rise Together responded to an offering issued by brokerage Newmark to partner with City Point Capital on the project, Rise Co-Founder Jim Grossmann said in an interview.
Rise’s half of the development partnership included a combined 43.75 percent ownership share from Brian Anderson and Chris Anderson, executives at Boston-based hard money lender Apex Capital, according to a statement of beneficial interest submitted to the Boston Planning & Development Agency. Grossmann invested the remaining 6.25 percent.
In March 2021, Rise Together unveiled revised plans adding 25,000 square feet of office space including its own headquarters, retail and “community/flex space,” a boathouse along with 120 housing units.
The BPDA approved the project in January 2022. Among the community benefits required of the developers was a $100,000 payment to “support the implementation of coastal resilience solutions in Port Norfolk” as outlined in the city’s 2020 Coastal Resilience Dorchester study.
Boston Harbor sea levels are projected to rise 40 inches by 2070, and the report estimated the total cost of installing berms and seawalls to protect the Port Norfolk peninsula at $66 million.
But the report did not identify sources of funding or cost-sharing between public and private property owners, and the city has yet to approve a detailed design for Dorchester resiliency, CLF’s Sullivan noted.
“It’s possible that if there was an articulated plan and funding in place for those things from the city, the proponents’ resilience measures planned here might have come closer to passing the sniff test,” Sullivan said. “Without those other factors, it’s certainly a non-starter from our perspective.”
MEPA Sends Back to Drawing Board
And state regulators seemed to agree. In August 2023, Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Rebecca Tepper ruled that the project’s supplemental final environmental impact report “does not adequately and properly comply” with the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Act, and ordered developers to submit additional details on coastal resiliency and flood control strategies.
Tepper’s ruling followed public comment letters from state regulators critical of the proposal.
Designs of a proposed boathouse building would redirect flood waters onto neighboring properties, state Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Regional Director John Viola wrote in a comment letter to the MEPA office. Vandana Rao, executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Commission, warned that two of the proposed buildings did not appear to be building code-compliant for construction in a floodplain.
By early 2024, a financial dispute emerged between Rise Together and the joint development entity, known as CPC Ericsson, over consultants’ fees.
In a civil suit filed in February 2024, Rise Together claimed that the joint venture entity had failed to reimburse it for $123,291 paid to Steven Winter Assoc. for Passive House building designs.
In March 2024, Crowd Lending Fund scheduled an auction to foreclose on the property. The Quincy-based lender had issued a $9 million mortgage in September 2022.
The auction was postponed after CPC Ericsson filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 7.
“The challenge of the project was not a permitting issue. It was more one of the economic times,” Rise Together’s Grossman said.
Steve Adams
A spokesperson for CPC Ericsson said the bankruptcy was caused by Rise Together missing several deadlines to acquire the property as agreed upon. Approval of a construction loan also was put at risk by proposed Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection regulations that would prevent new development in waterfront “velocity zones” subject to wave heights of 3 feet or more during storms.
CPC Ericsson still hopes to work out an agreement with its existing lender, Crowd Funding, and other lenders to salvage the project, the spokesperson said.
