Responds to Neighborhood Input With New Condos and Reduced Size

The Noannet Group today responded to comments and suggestions from the Readville neighborhood of Hyde Park by filing a Draft Project Impact Report (DPIR) for the proposed new middle-income residential project with the addition of a condominium component and a significant reduction in the total square footage of the project’s buildings.

“Since Noannet made its first formal filing with respect to this project in November 2016, Noannet team members have engaged in dozens of productive meetings with neighborhood residents, business owners and citizens’ groups,” said Jordan Warshaw, president of The Noannet Group. “In response to the welcome feedback received, we have made number of significant changes to our project.”

One building among the four planned, closest to the Sprague Street Bridge, will be reduced from seven to five floors. There will be 157 fewer apartments than there were previously – the original program called for 521 apartments and now there will be 364. And, though the original proposal allowed for no for-sale condominiums, there will now be 128. There will also be 21 fewer parking spaces on the site.

The total project size has been reduced by 75,000 square feet.

From the beginning, the vision of The Noannet Group, a seven-year-old developer of residential and mixed-use property working in the Boston area, has been to create a significant housing development for the middle class and to address one of Boston’s greatest housing needs. The Sprague Street location directly adjacent to the Readville MBTA Station and predominantly surrounded by train tracks was chosen in order to minimize its community impact.

The most significant change community members will see is the conversion of the project’s largest building from rental apartments to for-sale condominiums. This was a request from many area residents, who felt that the presence of homeowners as well as renters in the project would increase the integration of the new development with the existing community and help make residents feel more connected to their community.

Additionally, a number of longtime residents indicated that they had reached the stage of their lives where they wanted to downsize, no longer dealing with the burdens of single family home ownership, but did not want to leave their lifelong community, friends and family.

“We realized that, particularly in a neighborhood that has not seen any appreciable new multi-family development in decades, many residents would have material concerns about the project impacts,” said Warshaw. “We have tried hard to listen, and we have made a number of changes that we hope the community will find to be major improvements.”

Another concern raised by community members was a sense that portions of the project were out of scale with their surroundings. Accordingly, the most significant visual change people will see is the reduction in size of the building closest to the Sprague Street Bridge from seven to five stories, together with the addition of more space between the building and Sprague Street, to allow for wider sidewalks and more landscaping.

The result of this change, together with other massing changes elsewhere on the property, including moving a planned restaurant closer to Sprague Street, constitutes a 13 percent reduction in project square footage –approximately 75,000 square feet.

The mix of unit sizes has also been changed, reducing the percentage of larger, two- and three-bedroom units and increasing the percentage of smaller, studio and one-bedroom units. As a result, there will be 102 fewer bedrooms overall than in the original plan and 29 fewer living units.

Since the original plan was filed, Noannet’s traffic engineers have continued to conduct analyses on ways to use the project as a catalyst to improve the traffic situation in the area. They have suggested that a new traffic signal, at the intersection of West Milton and Sprague streets, would be warranted. Noannet will continue working with the Boston Traffic Department on area transportation issues.

BACKGROUND

In November, 2016, The Noannet Group filed a Letter of Intent with the Boston Planning and Development Agency setting forth its plans to create 521 new apartment residences with abundant amenities including a new restaurant on the site currently occupied by warehouse and truck maintenance buildings and yards on Sprague Street in the Readville neighborhood of Hyde Park.

The 6.6-acre site, at 36-40 and 50-70 Sprague St., is adjacent to the MBTA’s Readville Commuter Rail Station, serving the Fairmont and Franklin lines and making this project a prime example of transit-oriented development. The commuter-rail lines connect to South Station and extend west to Rte. 495/Forge Park. The project location is also accessible to MBTA Bus Routes No. 32 and 33.

“Designing and building apartments and for-sale residences on available and underused space around and near existing transportation hubs helps the city grow, adds to our supply of much needed housing -- thereby helping to address our high housing costs -- and alleviates transportation congestion,” said Sujit Sitole, Managing Director for Investments of The Noannet Group.

The four buildings will be laid out more like a college campus than a conventional apartment complex, with more than 90 percent of the parking below the complex’s plaza level. Based on this layout, the buildings will be oriented around large lawns and green space areas, with nearly 2.5 acres of green space in total, plus a central plaza adjacent and walkway connecting to Readville Station.

Surrounding the plaza will be a prominently located two-story workshare space to encourage residents to work from home, a large gym with multipurpose rooms and a half-court basketball court, a coffee house, a sports lounge, and a child-care center. There will also be a dog run, a rooftop pool and hot tub, several barbeque areas, multiple courtyards with table seating and fire pits, a putting green and a bocce court.

The project will create new gathering areas for the greater Readville community. Many Bostonians do not even know of the existence of Sprague Pond, which for decades has been surrounded by industrial and private residential properties, but the new development will create a public park along the pond, featuring picnic areas, seating areas and walkways.

At the pond edge of the campus will be a new restaurant, open to the public, and a community room with ”pondside lounge” that will be available both to project residents and the community for public meetings and events.

The two buildings closest to Sprague Street will now both be five stories, while the two buildings adjacent to the train tracks will be seven and eight stories, respectively. Due to the project site’s grade being significantly below that of Sprague Street, the apparent heights of the buildings from the street will feel lower. Thirty-six percent of the campus will be landscaped green space.There will be parking for 511 vehicles, including 471 in covered garages and the rest for short-term use.

The project will be highly sustainable, with a goal of LEED Gold level certifiability at minimum, drought-tolerant landscaping that reduces irrigation, vegetative podium that reduces runoff, low-flow plumbing, and solar panels on all four buildings.

Affordable housing will remain at 13 percent of the total units. Existing now on the site are four 50-plus-year-old warehouse and maintenance buildings, which will be demolished. Construction is expected to begin in early 2019, with phased openings targeted to begin in mid-2020.

The architect is Bargmann Hendrie + Archetype, Inc., of Boston.

ABOUT THE NOANNET GROUP

The Noannet Group was founded in 2011 with the mission of developing architecturally significant mixed-use, residential, and commercial buildings that enhance the communities in which they are located. Principal Jordan Warshaw is a 25-year industry veteran in the Boston area. For more information, please go to www.noannetgroup.com .