Lochdale Road Project Should Head to BPDA for a Vote Next Week

The public comment period on a large development project on Lochdale Road concluded at the end of April and the project should be before the Boston Planning and Development Agency’s board for a vote next Thursday.

     The proposed $ 7 million project at 43 Lochdale Rd. includes building a new four-story building will consist of 36 new residential rental apartments, primarily market rate, with five affordable units in accordance with the City’s Inclusionary Development Policy on a 22,500 square foot lot. The lot is comprised of one full parcel of land fronting on Lochdale Road, and a portion of a second, smaller parcel that fronts on Washington Street. The second parcel is being subdivided to enlarge the project site, while leaving a portion with Washington Street frontage for later infill development.

     According to the attorney for the developer, George Morancy’s filing with the BPDA, “The proposed project will consist of a new four-story building. The first floor will contain a lobby space, garage parking for 46 motor vehicles, a bicycle storage room, and a loading dock. Floors two through four will contain 36 residential units. Each floor will contain one 1-bedroom unit, ten 2-bedroom units, and one 2-bedroom-plus-study unit.  The building will define the street wall along both Lochdale Road and Kitson Road, and will fill the most of the combined lot.”

     The front face of the building will be set back nine feet from the lot line to provide for a wider sidewalk with tree planters and a planting bed.

     “On the Kitson Road side, the building face is setback 19 feet from the lot line to provide for a generous 9-foot wide sidewalk and a minimum road width for vehicles to encourage pedestrian and bicycle activity,” Morancy wrote in the filing. “Kitson Road and the new 9-foot walkway/bike path will serve as a connection to the bike path off Arboretum Street. On the south side lot line, the building face is set back 21.3 feet from the lot line to provide for added green space. The rear building face is set back 10.5’ from the lot line. The building is configured as three modules, in between which are light courts that provide views, and light and air to the interior second bedroom of each unit.”

     The exterior of the building’s will be a composition of fiber cement clap siding in two depths, fiber cement vertical siding, glass fenestration, and painted fiber cement trim and aluminum storefront.

     “The materials and rhythm of the façade are similar to adjacent residential buildings along Washington Street. The buildings form and scale are similar to other newer developments along Washington Street,” said Morancy.

     The proposed building height is approximately 40 feet to the roof of the uppermost story. Mechanical equipment, the stairways, and an elevator shaft head-house will rise above that point, but will set back from the front edge of the building so to not be visible from the street.

     “The materials and architectural massing have been planned and designed to relate and complement the scale of the existing adjacent buildings and to be consistent with neighborhood design,” said Morancy. “The materials and architectural massing have been designed to visually reinforce the geometry and movement of the site.”

     Community benefits include;

• the creation of 36 new rental apartments in an attractive low-rise building, including 5 affordable units in accordance with the Inclusionary Development Policy;

• generation of thousands of dollars in revenue annually to the City of Boston once the project is completed in the form of new real property tax payments;

• improvements to the property boundaries including landscape buffering and associated streetscape improvements; and

• the expected creation of at least 45 construction industry jobs to complete the proposed project.

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