November 1, 2018
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The future site of DotBlock near Glover’s Corner was shown last June after it was cleared by bulldozers. Bill Forry photo
With the site fully cleared and construction looming, the development team behind the Dot Block project in Glover’s Corner expects to come back to the community with an updated design before the end of the year.
A shifting cast of owners has been working for years to build a mixed-use development on the four-acre lot bounded by Dorchester Avenue and Greenmount, Pleasant, and Hancock streets. The team is now led by billionaire Gerald Chan, who came on board as the primary investor in December 2016.
The project has since undergone a period of design alterations, according to Catherine O’Neill, who represents the developers. “We have made very exciting changes that everybody is going to love,” she said. As to the nature of those changes, O’Neill wants to let civic leaders and local elected officials see them before sharing details with the general public.
“We hope to be in front of the civic groups and elected officials in the fall with a new design,” she said.
Dot Block received approval from the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) in May 2016, as a project with 362 units, 450 parking spaces, and about 37,000 square feet of retail.
When demolition of the existing, largely industrial site began last summer, City Councillor Frank Baker told members of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association that he saw a “concept” of the new design, “nothing that spoke to units, but the concept that I saw looked like a better plan to me.”
The plans Baker saw included improved connectivity through a different layout for the main cut-through public roadway that would service the businesses from the interior.
Chan and his team were in City Hall last week to meet with officials. At an interview with Reporter editors after that meeting, BPDA leaders discussed the alterations to the site and how the city and Chan are looking at his expanding Dorchester holdings.
Sara Myerson, the BPDA’s director of planning said they expect alterations to be “relatively minor. We aren't anticipating kind of a holistic throw out and revisit the project. “They want to get a shovel in the ground, Myerson noted, and there will be “modest changes around the edges to get there.”
There would be changes to the site planning, too, Myerson said.
The developers’ “thinking about a better approach to the site planning that allows for movement through the site and that allows for chemistry, for an activation along along Dot Ave. and makes it what they think will be more viable project seems positive.... That is an important thing, to have a project move forward and not just sit on an approved project. And when a community works in a very robust way on a project and is active on an IAG, they then want to see that become a reality as opposed to something that just kind of sits with an entitlement.”
Paul Nutting, a member of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association who also sits on the IAG for the development, said the group has not heard much on the project since Chan came on with the architecture firm Stantec.
“We heard there would be a through street to Dot Ave.,” he said. To his understanding, “the whole street thing was all about making the retail space work a little bit better… the frontage along Hancock was back door stuff.”
If there are significant changes, which Nutting feels would be the case if there are alterations to the site’s interior and connection to the main roads nearby, “I think they should reconvene at least one meeting of the IAG,” he said.
The Dot Block site is not Chan’s only holding in the area, which sits within an ongoing BPDA planning study focused on Glover’s Corner.
On top of the $19.1 million he paid for the Dot Block parcel, Chan closed a $17 million deal for the 4.7-acre Spire Printing Company site, just south of Savin Hill station, in May 2017. The year before, he acquired the nearby Russell Engineering parcel along Dorchester Avenue for $5.25 million. All three purchases were made under separate LLCs. No plans for the Russell or Spire sites have yet come before the community or the city in an official venue.
“Our conversations are very broad conversations with Gerald on this area,” said Michael Christopher, deputy director of development review for BPDA. “I think he has some short-term goals and some long-term goals. I think the long-term goals are going to be influenced by the planning study, but I do think he has some interesting concepts relative to, in the short term, is there a way to kind of make use of this and kind of have people kind of discover this area a little bit? Some place-making stuff like that.”
One person or entity owning a number of parcels within the area could actually help “facilitate the implementation of the goals that we heard from the community,” in projects like the Glover’s Corner planning study, said Ted Schwartzberg. He covers Dorchester for the BPDA planning department and is a co-lead on the Glover’s study.
New roads through the study area have been one priority for community members, Schwartzberg said. “The plan envisions that network of streets, a network of open spaces and often it’s a lot easier to implement when you have assembled parcels and consolidated ownership,” he said.
For now, the immediate project is Dot Block, said BPDA director Brian Golden.
“I think it’s a positive thing because, you know, we’ve had approval up there for a while,” he said. “But again, it’s not just about getting some, getting something, anything built. It’s about getting something built that’s good for the neighborhood in the long haul. And so there’s been another look at this and we expect it just to get better and serve the neighborhood better.”
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