New Developer "above" the block

Specifically the Mass Ave at Boylston Street Block...  The Peebles Corporation out of the warm, sunny, beachy, not cold and snowy, Miami Beach (yes, days like today make me wonder why they're coming to work all the way up here too), has won the right to develop Parcel 13, a MassDOT controlled air rights parcel over the Mass Pike.  

This was the only proposal of the three that stayed within zoning limits for the district and there seemed to be a large amount of attention focused on this fact during community discussions.  This coupled with the strong experience of Peebles in air rights development projects in other cities, and recent failure of the Columbus Ave air rights project may have helped to sway the board in their direction.

The next step for the proposed "Viola" development, consisting of a mix of condos, rental apartments, retail and a hotel, is BRA article 80 process which will most likely elicit major changes to the proposed drawing.  At a meeting earlier this month, there seemed to be large push back to the cantilever section of the project on the Mass Ave side of the property so this may be one of the first elements of the project to change.


I'm excited to see this project moving forward and looking forward to see what this final project does for the neighborhood (...even if we are about 7-years away from completion).  In the meantime... Let's activate this desolate urban wasteland and see if we can't make a place out of it before shovel's hit the ground.