High-tech space by Quincy bay
After hiking up a few floors in the main building of the Meriel Marina Bay apartment complex in Quincy, Sean Sacks of real estate firm Hines walked into a studio, stopped at the bed, and pressed a black button.
At the command, the motorized bed slowly retracted and disappeared inside a stand-alone white and wood closet with builtin drawers and shelves — including one for a flatscreen television.
“In a lot of studios, your bed takes up this much space,” said Sacks, director development for Hines, who then pressed the button again, and out from the closet came a wooden desk table. Instantly, the room went from sleeping quarters, to entertainment space, to a home office.
“I call it the Murphy bed 3.0,” Sacks said with a laugh.
This Swiss Army knifestyle, robo bed-closet is part of a pilot venture between Ori Systems of Cambridge, which makes the high-tech space-saving furniture, and the Meriel Marina Bay, a partially built 352-unit apartment complex at 552 Victory Road set to be completed by the end of the year.
It’s also one of the many amenities at Meriel, a massive housing compound that will include two sprawling five-story towers overlooking rows of boats docked on the Marina Bay marina that offer views of the Hub’s skyline across the water.
The units, about half of which are currently available, range in size from 591-square-foot studios to 1,478-square-foot three-bedrooms, and with monthly prices from $2,100 to $5,000. The Ori setups are set to be on limited request for additional cost.
While those prices might sound a bit steep for Quincy, the place is well designed — a modern, modular-looking collaboration between architectural firms Elkus Manfredi and Cube 3 Studio.
Inside, the units appear more like a cross between high-end condos and fancy hotel rooms, with slick kitchens with bright white quartz countertops, dark subway tile backsplashes, and stainless steel appliances. The bedrooms have fluffy carpets while the living rooms have hard laminate floors; most units have full decks and huge windows looking out to the water.
For those who like to mingle with neighbors, the complex is designed around its cool and contemporary common areas, such as the outdoor pool and indoor lounges and pool table, commercialstyle workout gym, Wi-Fi desks, open kitchen and conference rooms.
“We have a lot of people who work from home,” said Sacks, as he pointed to office-style conference rooms available all day and night to residents.
In addition, the place has easy access to Boston, either by ferry or a shuttle bus to the MBTA Red Line.
For information about rentals, visit merielmarinabay.