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Image courtesy of Boston Preservation Alliance
Preservationists are supporting a proposed life science tower at 125 Lincoln St. but asking the city of Boston to develop new guidelines for similar developments along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.
The Boston Preservation Alliance said it supports Oxford Property Group’s proposal to demolish a 1950s-era parking garage and commercial building to develop a new office-lab building.
The nonprofit group says the project spotlights the need for an overdue review of the city’s zoning for development along the Greenway and the existing patchwork of height limits.
“This project, like many others that have been proposed along the Greenway, violates the height limits of the Greenway Guidelines. We understand that these standards need to be reevaluated since it has become clear that many parcels along the Greenway cannot be feasibly redeveloped within the parameters of the guidelines,” the preservation alliance said in a letter issued this week.
Oxford Property Group has been seeking approval for the Lincoln Street project since 2019. In 2020, Oxford submitted revised plans for a shorter lab tower, reducing the height from 340 to 225 feet, in response to objections about shadow effects on Mary Soo Hoo Park, the most prominent open space in the densely-developed Chinatown neighborhood.
The group recommended the city begin a study resulting in permanent zoning for the ribbon of downtown parkland that was created by the removal of the elevated Central Artery.
“Abutters and property owners deserve to know what kind of development impacts to anticipate, developers deserve predictability, and community members deserve to know that their time helping to establish plans and development guidelines is not wasted,” the letter states.
The zoning for the Greenway-abutting parcels recommends various building heights in different neighborhoods from Chinatown to the North End, including a maximum 100-foot height for the Lincoln Street property which would require zoning variances.
Next to Faneuil Hall Marketplace, developer Gazit Horizons is proposing expansion of the Marketplace Center office-and-retail building, which would increase the building height to 125 feet in an area zoned for 100-foot maximum heights.
And Cross Street Ventures is seeking variances for approval of a 5-story hotel at 42 Cross St. in the North End, where Greenway-adjacent building heights are capped at 55 feet.
