Image courtesy of S9 Architecture

An office tower proposed for Boston’s Leather District that’s attracted complaints about excessive height next to the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway is scaling back its profile – while redesigning larger floor plates for life science labs.

Oxford Properties Group has proposed to reduce the 125 Lincoln St. tower’s height from 340 to 225 feet and seeking to obtain air rights from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to build a portion of the building above the neighboring on-ramp to Interstate 93.

The changes, submitted this week to the Boston Planning and Development Agency, would reduce the building’s square-footage from 625,000 to 393,500 square feet.

BPDA staff pushed back against the original 2019 proposal, office landlord Oxford’s first ground-up development venture in Boston, amid community complaints about the building’s size and shadow impacts upon the Greenway and Chinatown Park.

Oxford hired a new design team in late 2019, New York-based S9 Architecture, to rework the plans and Boston-based retail consultants Graffito SP to help with ground-floor activation strategies.

The potential use of air rights would allow the tower to be cantilevered above the highway ramp beginning at the second floor, Oxford said.

The changes also include improved pedestrian connections to the Greenway and Chinatown, and new open space at the north and south ends of the site, the notification form states.