By Greg Ryan
Boston University has agreed to pay $19.8 million to purchase a site on the edge of its campus that has city approval for a 17-story tower with more than 250 residences.
The property is next to the planned future home of West Station, a new transit hub featuring commuter-rail service. The transaction means that what had been set to become a large, transit-oriented apartment building could instead become student dormitories.
BU bought 76 Ashford St. in Allston from City Realty, the real estate developer that shepherded the proposed tower through Boston Planning and Development Agency approval last year. The site is now home to a single-story storage business.
The deal comes as some of Boston’s largest universities look to expand their on-campus housing. Also this week, Suffolk University bought an office building near Boston Common for $30 million to convert into dorms.
Earlier this month, BU filed for BPDA approval of its institutional master plan, which lays out its real estate plans through 2026. The Ashford Street property was not included in that filing.
BU spokesperson Colin Riley said that any future proposed project there would be part of the school’s next institutional master plan covering the decade that follows 2026. He did not directly address what that project could be.
“So, for now and in the immediate future, we will continue to operate the building under its current use and zoning,” Riley said.
The site is adjacent to BU’s track and tennis center and its softball field, on the western boundary of the campus. The streets immediately to the west include apartments popular with students as well as BU frat houses.
The school will need further BPDA approval for a change in use, even if it simply took the approved design and layout and turned it into student housing, as opposed to housing available to the general public. As approved now, the project reserves 36 apartment for households making below certain incomes.
BU’s proposed master plan for the next two years does not feature any new residential development. Previous plans included what is known as Student Village Residence III, an 11-story, 523-bed building between 10 Buick St. and 33 Harry Agganis Way. Riley previously told the Business Journal that proposal may resurface in a future master plan.
City Realty changes plans
Allston-based City Realty bought 76 Ashford in 2018 for $6.7 million and formally notified the city of its plans to build the tower there in 2020. It won the agency’s approval for those plans almost a year ago.
“We were in the process of gearing up to start, going up to capitalizing and building it, and were reaching out to development or operating partners when they reached out,” City Realty acquisitions director Clifford Kensington said. “It was a relatively quick transaction, as these things go.”
The deal comes amid an eventful few months for City Realty, which has included the $41 million purchase of a Brookline office park poised for a total overhaul as well as the fire at Jacob Wirth, which the firm and its partners had been working to reopen.
“We weren’t necessarily definitely going to sell, but at that point it made sense for them to make that move,” Kensington said of BU. “We’ve got a bunch of other projects we’ve got in the pipeline.”
Anthony D’Isidoro, president of the Allston Civic Association and a neighborhood activist, cheered the move. He said he pushed City Realty to sell to BU, contending more dorms for students would free up more of the neighborhood’s existing housing stock for residents.
“Hopefully this will draw more students out of the community and relieve the pressure on rents,” he said.
D’Isidoro did not feel confident about when or even if City Realty would move forward with construction, he said. He feared that the eventual construction of West Station would become more complicated if the Ashford Street tower was not yet built.
West Station is part of a huge planned development in Allston on what is now 100 acres of rail yard owned by Harvard University, blocked off from the rest of the neighborhood by train tracks and a sprawling I-90 interchange. The state plans to straighten that stretch of I-90 in order to unlock the area for development, though the construction of West Station is years away, if not a decade or more.