The historic, mostly vacant office building would include over 250 apartments, with ground-floor retail.
Source: Boston.com
By Beth Treffeisen
Boston developer Synergy is moving to launch the city’s largest office-to-housing conversion yet, filing plans last Wednesday to transform an 11-story, mostly vacant Downtown Crossing office building into more than 250 apartments.
The project would convert the upper floors of the existing building into multi-family residential use while maintaining retail space on the ground level. The building, which is next door to the Old South Meeting House, has no parking.
“Office to Residential conversions — putting homes close to jobs — is just good policy,” Synergy CEO Dave Greaney said in a statement to the city. “Less vacant office space and more residents downtown will help stabilize the office market, lessen the burden on transportation, and support downtown restaurants and retail.”
In a letter of intent filed on Jan. 14, the developers said the Old South Building, constructed between 1902 and 1904, is predominantly vacant, reflecting a shift in downtown office demand.
The downtown Boston office vacancy rate has remained high since the pandemic, at around 20%. Despite some signs of a recovery, employees are shifting to high-amenity new buildings, leaving older office buildings at risk.
So, after a successful few years, Mayor Michelle Wu in mid-December announced an extension of the city’s Office-to-Residential Conversion Program, which was set to expire at the end of last month.
The program, which launched in October 2023, received 22 applications to convert 1.2 million square feet of office space across 27 buildings into 1,517 new apartments, including 284 income-restricted units.
Four projects totaling 236 units are under construction, and one building at 281 Franklin St. has filled its 15 units.
Applications will remain open through the end of this year, and applicants must commit to obtaining a building permit and starting construction by the end of 2027 to benefit from the program.
The conversion program allows developers to have a 29-year, 75% residential abatement. It also gives builders as-of-right zoning in the downtown area and a fast-tracked Article 80 permitting process to save time and money.
The project at 294 Washington St. will offer the largest number of apartments to date at 255 units, surpassing any other office-to-housing conversion with 202,000 square feet of residential space, according to a December presentation by the city.
The next-largest project is at 50 Congress St. downtown, proposed by Mahoney Development. It’ll have 171 units in 193,000 residential square feet.
The biggest project under construction is at 31 Milk St. downtown, with Dinosaur Capital building 110 units in 95,000 square feet of residential space.
“This program has proven to be extremely successful in removing vacant office space from the market and breathing new life into older, pre-war office buildings,” Boston’s Chief of Planning Kairos Shen said in a statement. “By extending the program, we hope to attract another thousand units … with thousands of new residents in the heart of our city.”