The Boston Redevelopment Authority is launching an effort to invigorate the Broad Street area in the city’s historic Custom House District, an effort that may well include mixed commercial and residential development.

Reflecting changed market conditions, a Boston developer seeking to revive dormant plans for an office/retail building in the city’s historic Custom House District has added housing to the mix. Boston Redevelopment Authority spokeswoman Meredith Baumann acknowledged last week that Michael Rauseo has told the agency he will file a notice of project change within the next few weeks for the parcel at 80 Broad St.

It is coming back on line, Baumann said of the plan, which was initially designed in 1995 as an office/retail building. The latest proposal calls for a 15-story structure encompassing 7,500 square feet of ground-floor retail, 62,000 square feet of office space on floors two through seven, and 33 residential units on top of the structure.

Coincidentally, the BRA is launching an effort to invigorate the Broad Street area, which is surrounded by Faneuil Hall, the Financial District and Boston Harbor near the New England Aquarium. Baumann said BRA officials hope to meet soon with the Downtown Waterfront Business Association, a group of local property and business owners that last year held its own charette, or planning session, for the district.

DWBA representative John Dobie said the association is open to ideas and welcomes the BRA’s assistance in boosting the area’s presence.

There’s a general belief that Broad Street could be more than it is right now, said Dobie, adding, It’s hard to walk down the street and not see its potential.

Indeed, that is exactly what fueled the city’s interest, said Baumann, given that BRA Director Mark Maloney regularly troops between Boston City Hall and his home at Rowes Wharf via Broad Street. The planning equivalent of community policing gave Maloney the impetus to encourage his staff to focus on Broad Street.

Mark has talked a lot about enlivening the downtown and making it a 24-hour [environment], Baumann said. In that vein, a residential component would be a valuable plus down there, he said.

Dobie, himself a former BRA planner and now an official with Sullivan Properties, said he believes landlords would be willing to consider residential uses for their buildings, although the street has long been dominated by commercial operations. There is corporate housing in some of the buildings, however, as well as a new Wyndham Hotel that opened in 1998 in the historic Batterymarch Building.

We hope to get some of the property owners on Broad Street to sit down with the housing people at the BRA and just kick around the concept, said Dobie. Some people have expressed the opinion that it could bring more life and activity to the area, and that’s what we will be looking at.

Befitting its name, Broad Street is wider than most thoroughfares in downtown Boston, and Dobie said that aspect could help promote better layout, perhaps allowing for wider sidewalks to accommodate outdoor cafes and to create a pedestrian corridor between the Financial District and the waterfront. Traffic flow of vehicles might also be evaluated, Dobie said.

Architects Available
One bonus for Broad Street is that it does have a planning component already built in, given that the Boston Society of Architects is headquartered at 52 Broad St., while several prominent architects are also housed nearby, including the venerable Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott firm at 40 Broad St. Dobie said that the concentration of professional expertise helped lead to the recent charette on Broad Street, with the BSA and several area architects contributing to the day-long brainstorming session.

It’s really a beautiful street, Dobie said. It has some great old buildings that reflect a lot of eras of architecture.

Calls to Rauseo were not returned by Banker & Tradesman’s press deadline. According to sources, however, Boston-based CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares has been retained to design the new building, with Cambridge architect Graham Gund having been the architect for the $24 million plan that was unveiled in November 1995. Calls to CBT officials also were not returned.

Because of the silence of the developer and architects, it is unclear whether the CBT design incorporates 72 Broad St. into the new building, as was the case with Gund’s version. That four-story property, home to the Sultan’s Kitchen restaurant, sits on the northeast portion of the site, which is otherwise used as a surface parking lot. Rauseo would build 209 parking spaces on three underground levels as part of the CBT design, said Baumann.

At this point, it is too early to say how the BRA will weigh in on the issue, said Baumann, although some planning officials are said to be concerned about the project’s height. The earlier plan, which carried an estimated $24 million price tag, would have been 13 stories high. It also would have contained 120,000 square feet of office space, nearly twice what is now being proposed.

Baumann said she is not sure why Rauseo’s plan fell apart in the mid-1990s, with records indicating that he never filed a final project impact report as was required in order to proceed. The parcel was taken over as a staging area by the Central Artery in 1997, but was returned to Rauseo earlier this year, according to Baumann. Rauseo also was embroiled in a legal fight with his former development partner in the mid-1990s over their planned redevelopment of a building near Government Center. That project was eventually taken over by the Intercontinental Cos.

Because the original plan was never approved, Baumann said Rauseo would be required to go through the city’s Article 80 process before receiving his permits.

Residential Piece Added To Proposed Hub Project

by Banker & Tradesman time to read: 4 min
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