A developer intends to raze the Little House building on East Cottage Street and replace it with a six-story building that would house a 42-unit “extended-stay” hotel. In plans filed with the Boston Planning Department last week, Adam Sarbaugh said the proposed building would also include a ground-floor restaurant and rooftop cafe.
If approved, this would be the second re-development project on that block for Sarbaugh, who built a five-story building at the adjacent corner of Dorchester Avenue and East Cottage Street that contains 38 condos and the Dorchester Market store on the first-floor.
The Little House building, located at 269-275 East Cottage St., operated for decades as a youth and community center for the Columbia-Savin Hill community. Most recently, it was utilized by College Bound Dorchester, now known as UnCornered.
“We’ve done extreme outreach and discussion with all the stakeholders who know the value and history of Little House,” Sarbaugh told The Reporter this week. “I definitely know it’s a sensitive project and we’re treating it with care. It’s a change of the neighborhood and I think that it was a great thing for what it was, and we’ve tried over the years to find an adaptable use and on all of those we couldn’t make them work from a programming perspective.”
Frank Baker, a former Boston city councillor who grew up nearby, said the Little House was a haven for many kids in the 1970s and 1980s. The youth center offered year-round activities, mainly for children and teens along the Columbia Road corridor. Baker and his siblings attended daycare and after-school programming there.
“It helped people like myself and my group of friends get off the streets until 10 p.m. every night and helped us stay out of more trouble than we were already in,” he said.
“The Little House I grew up at was very critical to the community in the 1970s. There was a gym and teen programming and we were all part of the after-school programming that had gym hockey and basketball. They had a kitchen downstairs and taught us woodworking and sewing. It was a great experience for us.”
According to a history of Little House kept in the UMass Boston archives, the organization had roots in South Boston, where it began as a settlement house at 73 A St., where families were offered services like gardening plots, summer youth trips, and a baby clinic.
During World War II, demographics prompted its move to Dorchester, where it occupied the 1900-era Channing Unitarian Church building at 275 E. Cottage St. Mergers with other settlement houses brought it under the umbrella of the Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses, an agency that later became College Bound Dorchester/Uncornered.
The old church building still houses the Dot Art program, which Sarbaugh said will continue there through the summer.
He said he plans to pay homage to the Little House in the new building while hoping his extended-stay hotel concept will also serve the community and create “synergy on the block” with his other building at 959 Dorchester Ave. that includes Dorchester Market, a vacant restaurant space, and other existing businesses.
Sarbaugh predicted those using the new property could be traveling nurses, people in town for extended medical treatment, family members visiting relatives in Dorchester, and conventioneers looking for a more authentic and affordable experience.
“The concept comes in part from not having anything in the area,” he said. “If you went on AirBNB or hotels.com and searched Dorchester, there is a void that needs to be filled with the regulated and legal short-term market and the overnight hotel stays.”
Sarbaugh said that the hotel suites, which would include some meant for extended stays, will also “lessen pressure” on the surrounding residential housing stock by providing an alternative to Airbnb and similar short-term rentals. They would be furnished and would have no parking.
In a Small Project Review document filed with the Boston Planning Department last week, Sarbaugh’s Cornerstone Realty, based in Mission Hill, indicated they would raze the Little House building and a house next to it.
Another twist to the development is enhancing the existing restaurant space at 959 Dorchester Ave., which remains vacant and has been a hard sell, according to Sarbaugh. The proposed new building would contain a connection to the restaurant, allowing an expansion of the space’s square footage and adding a 2,584-square-foot rooftop dining terrace with a dedicated elevator.
Sarbaugh hopes those added elements will attract an existing restaurant looking to step up to the next level, while playing off of the Dorchester Market traffic.
“It’s what I think is a unique and exciting first coming to Dorchester,” he said. “All restaurants and commercial space in Dorchester is commercial frontage at the ground level with multi-family housing above it. This gives restaurant operators coming in a way to differentiate themselves as they operate.”
Sarbaugh said the new rooftop space/terrace in the hotel would be connected by a dedicated elevator to move patrons from the street level up to the roof. There would be a separate elevator for access to the other floors.
The proposed building would have no guest parking; the filing says its location off Dorchester Avenue “encourages the use of public transportation” by guests, visitors, and employees.
Baker said he is an early supporter of the extended stay concept. He noted that before AirBNB was more regulated in Boston, many vacationers would stay in Dorchester and contribute to the businesses around them.
“When they changed things for AirBNB here, all that business left,” he said. “Southie now has their boutique hotels, and I think this is a natural progression and a good idea on his part.”
Review meetings for the project will be forthcoming, but none have been scheduled.
