Image courtesy of Lincoln Property Co. and Quaker Lane Capital
Three development teams emphasize sustainable designs and diverse project teams in submissions to develop a Boston Seaport District property as life science space.
The Boston Planning & Development Agency offered the 1.1-acre parcel U at 7 Channel St., which includes a former Stavis Seafoods processing facility, for a range of commercial projects, while ruling out a hotel or residential use. Three teams submitted proposals which were released this week.
Marcus Partners and RISE Together propose a 181,000-square-foot lab building including classroom space reserved for the BioBuilder workforce training program and BioBus marine ecology educational program. The project team comprises minority-owned companies including Cadre Real Estate Investing, a New York real estate investor that will contribute $10 million in equity for the project, according to the team’s submission.
Lincoln Property Co. and Boston-based Quaker Lane Capital propose a 181,000-square-foot building including 167,730 square feet of lab and office space, a 7,000-square-foot community training lab and 6,570-square-foot cafe.
The $300 million project would include a training lab to expand STEM and life science career programming that Lincoln Property plans at its nearby Seaport Circle lab project, which will be built at 701 Congress St.
Quaker Lane Capital will contribute $22.15 million, or 45 percent of the required developer equity, and lead the team’s minority and community fundraising efforts which would be offered at investments as low as $5,000. The team is targeting up to 40 percent of the design, engineering and consulting contracts to be performed by minority and women-owned businesses, along with 30 percent of construction contracts and 30 percent of property management.
Beacon Capital Partners and the Boston Real Estate Inclusion Fund submitted a proposal for a 292,355-square-foot office-lab building, along with 4,160 square feet of ground-floor marine industrial use and an option for a 2-story, 10,310-square-foot fire station.
The proposals also include alternate submissions that include core-and-shell space for a fire station, as requested by the BPDA to improve emergency services response to the neighborhood following a decade of rapid development.
The BPDA also asked developers to include aggressive sustainability designs as part of its decarbonization strategy, announced in June for parcels owned and managed by the BPDA and Economic Development and Industrial Corp. of Boston.
The Marcus Partners-RISE Together group said its project is designed to run on all-electric building systems in normal conditions, and plans a solar array on the building’s roof.
Lincoln Property and Quaker Lane Capital’s project would include all-electric heating and hot water systems, and air source heat pumps to cover 25 percent of peak heating loads. Natural gas boilers would only be used when the temperature drops below zero degrees Fahrenheit, reducing natural gas use by 95 percent from a traditional structure.
And the Beacon Capital-BREIF proposal targets net zero performance with all-electric building systems and a solar array.
