Construction on Washington Village Expected to Kick Off This Year
Since approval nearly 3 years ago, Washington Village has been one of South Boston’s most anticipated projects. With Samuels & Associates joining the development team late last year, it appears the project is finally set to start construction before the end of 2019. Peter Sougarides, Principal at Samuels & Associates discussed the neighborhood changing development at a CREW Boston luncheon last week.
While most recently Samuels success has come in Fenway, their roots can be traced back to Dorchester/South Boston where they undertook their first project, The South Bay Center. Nearly 30 years later they are back in Southie looking to further revitalize this formerly industrial section of the neighborhood that is ideally located just a few minutes from downtown, with easy transit access. Having spent roughly 5 years working on master planning and zoning for their Fenway endeavors along with gathering and addressing neighborhood input, the Samuels team was more than prepared for a project of Washington Village’s size. Sougarides expressed the importance of working with local residents to understand their feedback on development. These discussions led to the creation of an urban village featuring over 1500 residential units with around 80 shops and restaurants. Samuels also just opened a 1-acre park at 401 Park Drive as part of the Fenway Center redevelopment to bring more green space to the neighborhood.
With this thinking in mind, Samuels entered the Washington Village project by first taking a step back and setting out to determine what the area really needs. With almost 700 residential units plus around 100,000 square feet of retail planned the development team wants to look at how they will attract a variety of residents and create a place that others from outside the neighborhood will also want to visit. Sougarides stressed the importance of getting the retail right along with a need for great restaurants and new niche fitness concepts. A final, very important aspect of the development will be a large amount of open and active outdoor space. These programmed spaces will bring the community together and also draw in others from outside South Boston.
When asked about parking for the project, a hot button issue in Southie, Sougarides mentioned this was one of the questions they are still working on resolving. The neighborhood is requesting around .7 or .8 spaces per unit however in their experience they have not seen that high demand in transit-oriented urban developments. Sougarides expects the first stages of the project to come in around this higher ratio with data on decreased demand then used to justify a lower ratio of closer to .4 or .5 spaces by the end of the project.
The big question on everyone's mind is, of course, when will construction kick off. Sougarides told the crowd they expect to begin work on the first building, low-rise residential to include around 200 units of housing, by the end of this year. The rest of the project will then continue along Old Colony Ave. based on market demand. With Boston’s growing population Sougarides and his team see the demand for these new units however they will closely monitor the market to determine size/type of units and what amenities they need to bring in residents/buyers.
