"Excessive Height?" Replacing 7 stories with 7 stories

Banker & Tradesman
Centremark Proposes Hub Office Plan
By Thomas Grillo
Reporter


It could become even harder to find parking in Boston’s Back Bay.

Centremark Properties has proposed razing the 6-story garage at 4-6 Newbury St. and replacing it with a 49,000-square-foot, 7-story, terra cotta-and-glass structure with indoor parking. If approved, the building would offer retail on the first three floors and offices on the upper levels. The developer needs city approval to exceed zoning height limits of 65 feet.

“Our intention is to upgrade the building and we’ve tried not to make the building’s height overbearing,” said Richard J. Bertman, principal of CBT Architects in Boston.

But many residents at last week’s public hearing on the project disagreed. State Rep. Martha M. Walz acknowledged that no one would miss the nondescript garage if it were demolished, but she noted that the building’s lack of appeal does not justify making its replacement taller.

“I cannot support the excessive height at this location and I hope you are all here because you agree,” she said to applause.

The garage is located on the first block of Newbury Street opposite the TAJ Boston, formerly the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and is surrounded by upscale shops. The 41,650-square-foot brick building was constructed in 1980 to provide parking for the Carlton House at 2 Commonwealth Avenue and the Ritz. The garage was sold last summer to Newbury Garage Assoc., a Centremark subsidiary, for $15.9 million.

If the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) gives the project a thumbs-up, the mix of uses would include 28,200 square feet of office, 20,800 square feet of retail and 16 parking spaces. Today, the garage is a monolithic structure with tinted windows. The two garage doors opening onto the Newbury Street would be removed if the project were approved.

But few residents expressed support for the plan at the two-hour session at the Boston Public Library. Jacquelin Yessian, chairwoman of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay (NABB), opposed any change in the height limit for the historic district.

Steven Sayers, a Marlborough Street resident, expressed concern that the project would set a precedent for replacing other buildings with taller ones.

Susan Prindle, a NABB member, said the developer is asking to increase the height by about a third. “This is totally out of whack,” she said. “With mechanicals, the height would be almost 100 feet. The proposal is a lot larger than it should be.”

Still, not everyone was opposed to the project. David Gibbons, TAJ’s general manager, spoke in favor. “We would rather see a new world-class building than a rehab of the ugliest building in the Back Bay,” he said.


‘It Makes Sense’


William Motley, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle, said the office conversion idea for the garage has been talked about for 15 years. While investors believed the location is ideal, the vacancy rate only recently dwindled to the single digits, making the project viable.

“In a market with a 3.6 percent vacant rate, it will probably lease fairly well,” he said. “There’s only one other office building in the pipeline, and they’re having their own issues. It makes sense to examine alternatives.”

Boston Properties has proposed a $115 million high-rise at 888 Boylston St. But the controversial plan has pitted NABB against the developer. The well-organized group has rallied other neighborhoods to voice their opposition during meetings of the Prudential Project Advisory Committee (PruPAC), a 41-member panel founded to advise City Hall on development at the Pru.

The project, to be built between the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention, has been in the works for years. In 2002, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) approved the office building at 11 stories. But the 287,000-square-foot high-rise never broke ground. Today, the developer is seeking city approval for a 19-story structure.

Earlier this month, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino told Banker & Tradesman that he would like to see the two sides settle their differences and reach a compromise. But so far Boston Properties has not offered to lower the height and NABB has refused to support a taller building.

Yessian, NABB’s chairwoman, has declined to comment on Menino’s offer for a compromise. But in an op-ed column in The Boston Courant last year, she wrote that while the 11-story building called for in the master plan would be an asset to the Pru, “we strongly oppose any building that would exceed this height.”

Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association and a strong supporter of the building at 19 stories, said she is disappointed that some members of PruPAC have refused to consider a compromise.

“The point of PruPAC is to work together to reach consensus,” she said.

In a recent letter to the BRA, Mainzer-Cohen wrote, “The building proposed at 888 Boylston St. at 19 stories is a better building for the neighborhood and will create another signature building in Back Bay. The building’s architecture will add a modern glass facade to the streetscape and add first-class office space to Back Bay, which is in demand.”