Candy distributor looks to move, build condos


David Taber

CENTRAL JP—Ricardo Austrich Sr., the owner of Maracas Distributors, a local candy distribution business at 65 Green St., is looking to redevelop the 6,500 square-foot site into market-rate condos, he told the Gazette last week.

Austrich Sr. told the Gazette the business—which distributes candy to convenience stores throughout JP and other Boston neighborhoods, as well as to Rhode Island—that the business has long been too large for the Green Street garage site.

“We like being in the neighborhood and we are going to protect the neighborhood as much as we can,” Austrich Sr., who moved the business into the Green Street site in 1980, told the Gazette.

Austrich Sr.’s son, Ricardo Austrich Jr., presented what he described to the Gazette as a “worst case scenario” proposal for a four-story, 58-foot, 10-condo unit building on the site at a Sept. 28 community meeting attended by 17 people, he told the Gazette.

Austrich Jr., a landscape architect by trade, stressed that the plans are very preliminary. The family is working with an architect, but has not yet brought a developer on board, he said.

“My father has a long history in the neighborhood and first wanted to approach the neighbors,” he said

“Construction will not begin in 2011…It’s closer to five years away,” he said.

He said that the architect is drawing up a plan that responds to some of the neighborhood concerns, and that the family hopes to host another community meeting before Thanksgiving.

“It will almost certainly be smaller,” Austrich Jr. said of the final plans.

Austrich Sr., who gave his age as “older than 70,” said he hopes to relocate Maracas to somewhere in JP, but that he is also looking at a site in Hyde Park.

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