Dorchester developer Douglas George is proposing a large residential development for a swath of Massachusetts Avenue occupied until recently by a car dealership and industrial firms.

The Development company Roseclair Boston, LLC, for which George is the manager, is pitching two attached six-story buildings containing forty residential condominium units for the site. The residences would be primarily market rate, with five affordable units in accordance with the city inclusionary development policy, according to the Letter of Intent submitted to the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) on Aug. 16.

The cost of the development has been put at $12.5 million, including $ 7.5 million in construction costs. “I think it will be a great project,” George said in an email Monday. “It is replacing a used car lot and we will be activating that part of Mass Ave. as we help create what will become a lively new gateway to the city from the south.”

The development plan, spanning 1258-1272 Massachusetts Ave., comprises two contiguous lots containing 6,001 and 13,896 square feet of land near the new Dorchester Brewing Company and the Carpenters Union Local 33 hall. An Express Motors used car dealership formerly occupied No. 1258.

Approximately 1,463 square feet of commercial space would be divided between the buildings, which would share 37 accessory parking spaces located partly at grade, and partly in a ground-level garage.

Each building will contain 20 residential units, with the structure at 1258-1262 Mass Ave. containing 18,793 square feet of gross square footage. That building would include 311 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and five floors of housing.

The other building, No. 1268-1272, would be similarly sized but include 1,152 square feet of ground-floor commercial space that will likely provide for a combination of restaurant and office space, George said.

He identifies the site’s location — just under a mile from both the Andrew and JFK/UMass stops on the Red Line and near the Newmarket commuter rail stop -— as part of the appeal from a development perspective.

The northernmost village in Dorchester is George’s home turf, as well as the site of much of his 20 years of development work. A long-time developer in the neighborhood, he was previously involved in the razing and renovation of apartments at 24 Rawson St. in the Polish Triangle. He is married to Boston City Councillor at-large Annissa Essaibi-George.

The condominium proposal has been “well received” by the John W. McCormack Civic Association zoning committee, as well as at a community meeting hosted by the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services, George said.

Travis Stewart, with the McCormack civic group, said they were given a look at the project in October 2015 while it was still in largely conceptual stages. George presented to the executive board and the zoning board, but not before the full membership, Stewart said.

Reaction was “pretty positive” at the time, Stewart said. The possibility of restaurant space was broached at those meetings, but Stewart is curious about the logistics of fitting a restaurant into one of the designated commercial spaces in the proposed structure, most of which are under 200 square feet, with only one breaking 1,000-square feet.

The civic group would certainly like to see something else go into the car dealership lot, he said. With the site’s proximity to the brewing company and the South Bay Mall expansion, density in the area will likely skyrocket in the next one to three years, he said.

“Development is coming to the neighborhood and we know it,” Stewart said, “so we want to make sure it fits in with the neighborhood.”

Ideas pitched by McCormack members included alterations to the building’s external design to avoid the kind of blocky facades that have become common in South Boston.

As a development totaling less than 50,000 square feet, 1258-1272 Massachusetts Ave. is subject to the BRA’s small project review process. The letter of intent is currently being evaluated by the department. Pending all permitting and BRA approvals, George expects to begin construction later this year and finish in late 2017.