City Realty Pitches Changes to Approved Maverick Street Project

At Monday night’s Gove Street Citizens Association (GSCA) meeting, zoning attorney Matt Eckel briefed members on changes his clients have made to the GSCA approved project.

City Realty purchased the parcels at 167-169 Maverick St. that once housed the Saints and Angels Ceramic Store and originally wanted to renovate the existing three-story brick structure and erect a five-story addition for a total of 28 housing units with 11 parking spaces at the ground level. 

After several community and abutters meetings the developers reduced the overall unit count to nine. This change was accepted by GSCA members and the group voted in favor of the changes. 

Eckel said after working with the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) as well as hearing from elected officials and residents on the lack of affordability City Realty decided to add two additional units and designate one of those two as affordable. 

City Realty’s James Caruso said, “We heard some feedback from the BPDA, elected officials and given the overall push around the city around affordable housing we feel we found a solution with this project in a way that addresses the Affordable Housing aspect.”

Under the BPDA’s inclusionary policy, any development over 10 units must have an affordable component. Because the project was reduced to nine units the project was no longer subjected to the inclusionary policy. 

“The good thing about this project is we did not have to change the square footage at all to fit the two additional units,” said Caruso. “So a lot of times you have to make the building bigger to get additional units in there but with this one we didn’t have to.”

However, there was some discussion on hammering out whether or not the project would have to come back to the GSCA for a vote. While GSCA voted to approve the project they supported nine units and not 11. 

GSCA Chair Lorraine Curry was of the opinion that the group should take another vote on the project at their next meeting in September because of the addition of two additional units. 

Meanwhile, Eckel seemed disappointed the group couldn’t just take a vote Monday night so the team can move to the next phase of the zoning process with the city. 

“I would think because you’ve made a change that is different from the original project presented, and you’ve increased the number of units a new vote should be taken,” said Curry. 

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