QUINCY – Developers have scrapped the idea of building a seven-story hotel in the 1500 block of Hancock Street in Quincy Center in favor of constructing an apartment building there of the same size.
LBC Partners of Boston presented to Quincy’s city council on Tuesday night a plan to build 171 apartments over 15,000 square feet of commercial space at 1500 Hancock St., which the organization already owns
Alex Matov, a principal at LBC, said that LBC hired a hotel consultant, who ultimately told the developers that the Quincy Center market would not support a hotel at this point.
So they plan to build a 153,000-square-foot, seven-story mixed-use building that the company is tentatively calling Nova Residences of Quincy, keeping the name similar to the 28-room Nova Suites long-stay hotel next door at 3 Cottage Ave., which LBC also owns.
Matov said that 36 apartments on the building’s second floor would be designed such that LBC, which would continue to manage the property, could easily turn them into hotel rooms if the market demands it, with the rest of the building remaining as is.
The city council will vote on whether to accept a land-disposition agreement that’s been drawn up by LBC and Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch’s administration.
The agreement would involve the city giving LBC a 10,196-square-foot chunk of parking lot behind the current building at 1500 Hancock St., which used to house businesses including the Half Door bar and Gentle Dental. In exchange, LBC would trade the city two pieces of the property that LBC owns there – a 2,535-square-foot strip of land at the front of the property on Hancock, and a 3,122-square-foot rectangle of land next to the current building.
That second portion of land would become a public atrium, allowing public access to the apartments and the restaurants and shops below from both Hancock Street and the area behind it, which the city wants to include open space as well as a 650-to-700-space parking garage.
William Geary, who oversees downtown development for Koch’s administration, said that the Nova apartment building and the glass atrium that the city envisions next to it will help enliven Quincy’s downtown area.
“This is a centerpiece of the city’s main street,” Geary said before the meeting.
He said that LBC would pay for the design of the atrium, but the city would foot the bill for actually building it.
The agreement also would result in LBC rerouting and replacing a portion of the aging town brook that goes under the property and the parking lot. Geary said that the culvert is a century old.
The council’s discussion about this agreement will continue at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 6.
The city council recently gave its blessing to an agreement in that same block that involved selling city land to developer Peter O’Connell so O’Connell could build a 15-story mixed-use building featuring 124 high-end apartments on it. In that deal, the city agreed to let O’Connell forgo paying property taxes, instead having him give the city a 10 percent cut of the gross revenue from the project.
The LBC agreement would not involve any tax breaks.
The mayor hopes that O’Connell’s project, called Chestnut Place, as well as the LBC project and the garage all can come online in 2019.
If the LBC agreement passes, it, like the O’Connell project, would still need to go before the city’s planning board for final approval.
Source: http://www.patriotledger.com/news/20170222/hotel-out-171-apartments-in-for-hancock-street-proposal