By Michael Coughlin Jr.
At its meeting last week, the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) Board approved a project bringing several units to 99-105 Addison Street.
As explained by Zoe Schutte, a project assistant in the Planning Department, the project includes constructing a four-story building containing 20 units, 10 parking spaces, and 22 bike spaces.
Ella Wise, a senior planner, noted that the project is located in the East Boston Residential (EBR)-4 zoning subdistrict. Moreover, she indicated that part of the site is located in the Coastal Flood Resilience Overlay District (CFROD).
“The proposed project has elected to fully comply with the provisions of Article 25A, which governs coastal flood resilience,” said Wise.
“Specifically, what that means is all residential uses are elevated two feet above the sea level rise base flood elevation.”
Following Wise’s description of how the project aligns with zoning regulations, Attorney Richard Lynds briefly discussed the project.
Lynds thanked the planning staff and spoke about how the project had moved forward efficiently in that it went before the BPDA Board in a little more than six months since its first small project review pre-file meeting.
“This area of East Boston, which is in the Harbor View neighborhood, is the portion of Addison Street that has seen a good amount of investment and development over the past few years and the changes to the zoning, which helped make this project a little more predictable for us was something that we really worked closely with, with staff, and we feel represents yet another fully zoning compliant project for the community,” said Lynds.
Following Lynds’ statements, Monte French, the project architect, briefly outlined the project. French discussed facets of the project that were included to comply with the city’s complete street guidelines, such as the inclusion of two new street trees, new bike posts, and a new curb cut.
French also reviewed the building elevations. It should be noted that the elevations appear to show the building as five stories; however, Lynds had indicated in previous meetings that since the building is in the CFROD, height is measured from design elevation rather than grade, and the bottom level is considered ground level rather than the first story, meaning that it is referred to as a CFROD-compliant four-story building.
After French had gone through other aspects of the project and reviewed some renderings, it was time for questions from the board.
Board Member Kate Bennett asked about the size of the units, and French said there would be a mix of one- and two-bedroom units. More specifically, a press release on the Planning Department’s website announcing the project’s approval indicates that the building will have four one-bedroom units and 16 two-bedroom units.
Priscilla Rojas, the Board’s chair, asked about a monetary contribution that will be made to Tree Eastie as part of the project.
Tree Eastie is a local non-profit focused on strengthening East Boston’s tree canopy, which is the lowest in the city.
“It’s a non-profit that has generated a lot of interest and worked very closely with the development community,” said Lynds.
“So one of the things that we look at as we eliminate some of the tree canopy… is to replace that in kind through a contribution or additional trees, whether those are street trees or trees on-site,” he said.
“So we’ve estimated the value at about $17,000 for replacement of trees that may be removed from the site, and we’ll make that contribution to Tree Eastie.”
Ultimately, the Board unanimously approved the project after Rojas complimented the Planning Department on the speed with which it was evaluated.
To watch the Board meeting in its entirety, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VViYwZzdzIA.