QUINCY – Some ceremonial sledgehammer whacks through the window of what used to be The Half Door bar became the first visible changes to the spot that will hold a large Quincy Center apartment building.
LBC Partners of Boston, the developers who plan to build 171 top-of-market apartments over 15,000 square feet of commercial space at 1500 Hancock St., held a groundbreaking celebration behind the property on Tuesday morning.
“New beginnings continue to happen in Quincy Center,” Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch said. “It’s a great day.”
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The demolition likely will start in earnest toward the end of this month or the start of June, said Jonathan Miller, manager for the $40 million project for LBC.
He said that crews were currently working inside on getting demolition ready, and replacing the town brook underneath of it, which the developers agreed to reroute as part of the project.
That subterranean infrastructure aspect of the project, which will change the route the brook takes underneath that block, will have to be done before building can start.
LBC envisions that the company will get all the work done on their project in about two years. The project has received the local permitting and council approval it needs, though the state still has to sign off on the project before building can commence.
The new seven-story building, called Nova Residences, will replace the empty storefronts that currently sit at that address. The first floor, featuring commercial space, would feature a restaurant and some retailers, according to plans.
This project comes following a land-swap between the developers and the city, where LBC gave away a strip of land along the front of the property and a corridor of space running from the corner of Hancock Street and Cottage Avenue back to the lot behind the properties in exchange for a piece of the city-owned lot in the back.
The corridor leading back to what’s now the lot will be a glass public atrium leading back to what’s planned to be open pedestrian space and a parking garage.
“This is a humongous milestone for us and for the city,” said Alex Matov, a managing partner at LBC. “It’s been two years of getting ready for this day, and in two years there will be a beautiful new building standing here.”
The LBC project is the first to be approved of three major projects in the works for that block. On the north side of the lot, developer Peter O’Connell is seeking to build a 15-story building called Chestnut Place featuring 124 apartments over 4,000 feet of commercial space in what would be the tallest building in Quincy.
The city administration is proposing an $80 million bond bill that would fund, among other various infrastructure work, the construction of a parking garage that would help support both the Chestnut and Nova developments. If approved, the work on all three pieces would happen over the next two years or so.
Source: http://www.patriotledger.com/news/20170516/lbc-breaks-ground-on-quincy-center-project