Peter O’Connell, Sean Galvin, and the development team of Alex Matov and Andrian Shapiro are the latest players joining the effort to revitalize Quincy Center, a goal that hit a major road block last year when Mayor Thomas Koch cut ties with the city’s master development partner, Street-Works.
One is a Quincy native who built the posh Marina Bay development, the World Trade Center in Boston and a shopping center in Ireland. One is a homegrown developer with a track record erecting new apartments and condominiums in Quincy. And one is a foreign investment team with deep pockets but no development experience in the city.
Peter O’Connell is the elder statesman. Sean Galvin is Mr. Reliable. And the team of Alex Matov and Andrian Shapiro are the “new kids on the block,” as Mayor Thomas Koch described them.
These developers are the latest players joining the effort to revitalize Quincy Center, a goal that hit a major road block last year when Koch cut ties with the city’s master development partner, Street-Works.
Koch announced this week he plans to partner with O’Connell and the Matov/Shapiro team to build on the city-owned Hancock Parking Lot, and he expects to make more deals in the future to develop both the Hancock lot and the Ross Garage property, also owned by the city. Galvin’s project is on private land and doesn’t involve a land deal with the city, but it’s proof of a growing private interest in the Quincy Center area, albeit largely for residential use and not as much for retail and office.
Today’s blueprint for downtown pales in comparison to Street-Works’ $1.6 billion plan to transform as many as 12 blocks in the heart of the city with a mix of new residential, commercial and office buildings, but Koch said the city’s new “bite-sized” approach to redevelopment is more practical and will help attract new retail and office projects.
Perhaps the best choice for a sure bet for Koch was Peter O’Connell, who along with his brother, William, helped build a chunk of the residential properties that exist in Quincy today. O’Connell, who ran for Quincy mayor in the late 1980s, has deep-rooted business and political connections.
O’Connell, who wants to build a 15-story luxury apartment building on the existing Hancock Parking Lot, has built apartment buildings near the city’s center – on School and Granite streets – but never in the heart of downtown.
“We’ve developed around Quincy Center, but we never cracked Hancock Street,” O’Connell said. As a Quincy native and as one of its success stories, O’Connell said he feels a sense of responsibility to help the downtown. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “There aren’t many people who can pull off a $45 million job in Quincy. We don’t need to do it. If we can do it, why not?”
Sean Galvin, along with his brother, Scott, has been building residential properties in his home city for the past two decades. In Quincy Center, Galvin has proposed two buildings holding 48 condos and ground-floor commercial space at the old Woolworth building at 1545 Hancock St.
“The opportunity to build downtown with this type of energy just hasn’t existed,” Galvin said. “The stage seems to have been set.”
After the city cut ties with Street-Works, Koch said one of the first developers that approached him was LBC Boston, led by Alex Matov, from Russia, and Andrian Shapiro, from Ukraine.
“At the first meeting when they came in to see me, asking about the project, I said to them what I said to about a dozen other folks: Go buy some property,” Koch said. “They have done that, and they haven’t stopped.”
In the past year, Matov and Shapiro, who both moved to the U.S. in the 1990s, have purchased five Quincy Center properties for more than $23 million. Their first major proposal is to build a six-story hotel with ground-floor retail and office space at 1500 Hancock St., a development that will include some of the city-owned Hancock Parking Lot.
Koch said he also expects LBC Boston to be a part of the city’s redevelopment of the Ross Garage site.
“We see this as an opportunity,” Matov said of investing in Quincy Center.
According to Mariellen Burns, a spokeswoman for LBC Boston, the group’s portfolio consists of approximately one million square feet of mixed-use properties in and around Boston. She said the group’s investments have ranged from buying rental properties to renovations and partial tear downs.
For example, Burns said LBC converted an existing mill building in Lowell into a medical building. Also, she said the pair are building residential units in Brighton.
Since Koch cut ties with Street-Works last year, Gate Residential, a Boston developer with financial backing from local investor Quincy Mutual Fire Insurance has pledged to build two new apartment buildings on the block where Street-Works left a gaping excavation hole.
Also, on the outskirts of Quincy Center, local developers Michael Kiley of The Heritage Companies and Peter McLoughlin of Boston Property Development have received approval in recent months to construct new apartment and condominium buildings, while Gerard Lorusso of Plainville-based Edgewood Development has purchased the old Central Middle School with plans to convert them into condos.
Source: http://www.enterprisenews.com/article/20150410/NEWS/150405912