A rendering of Suffolk Downs' Beachmont Square section shows the Amaya apartment building, bottom left, the Portico residential block, rear left. A planned hotel would occupy part of the low-rise portion of the block to the rear right. Image courtesy of ICON Architecture
The long-awaited second building in HYM Investment Group’s massive Suffolk Downs development just notched another piece of its capital stack with state help.
The second block on the project’s Revere side, a 473-unit apartment building dubbed “Portico,” landed $5 million in state Housing Development Incentive Program tax credits.
The HDIP program funds market-rate housing developments in Massachusetts’ 26 Gateway Cities, industrial, largely working-class communities where unsubsidized rents are often too low to cover the region’s high construction costs.
While Suffolk Downs is designed to ultimately hold around 10,000 homes and 5.2 million square feet of office and lab space on a 161-acre former horse racing track that straddles the Boston-Revere line, only one apartment building has gone up so far.
The 475-unit Amaya received $150 million in financing in September 2022 from Washington, D.C.-based insurer Ullico – just as the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting interest rate hike campaign was building up steam. Construction wrapped up in fall 2024, and with a Blue Line subway stop next door and studios starting at $2,350, the building’s new units were absorbed quickly.
But despite that success, and repeated rumors that further groundbreakings were just around the corner, the remaining four pads in the “Beachmont Square” section of the development have stayed stubbornly quiet in the face of the same financial headwinds that have bedeviled most other projects in Greater Boston. And HYM hasn’t even begun site prep work on the site’s Boston side, which comes with a more expensive set of promised community benefits and a huge park-slash-stormwater infrastructure complex.
In response to an inquiry from Banker & Tradesman about the HDIP award, HYM said in a written statement that it was still finalizing the full financing package for the Portico block, but anticipated to square that away and break ground “in Fall 2025.”
While potential Federal Reserve interest rate cuts – between 25 and 75 basis points’ worth are hotly anticipated for the fall – won’t be big enough to unleash a torrent of construction, they’ll meaningfully lower costs for a project of Portico’s size. While Amaya was only 8 stories tall, a 14-story residential tower covers half of the Portico block.
A second building could also join Portico under construction next summer, HYM said: a 150-room hotel next door that will be built separate from the larger residential block where it’s located.
