DOCK GARAGE REDESIGN Plan includes condos, pool, patio
New York-based Fortis Property Group tapped Stantec Architecture to design its proposed 10-story, 195-unit condominium addition to the Dock Square Garage and Hard Rock Cafe next to Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace.
The design includes a glass facade and stair-like roofline with terraces that cascade down toward the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The brick-faced garage, built in 1980, would be reclad with a warm-colored base of terracotta louvers and perforated metal panels grouped in a vertical grid.
Renderings of the proposed project, slated for the triangular property bound by Clinton and North streets and John F. Fitzgerald Surface Road, are included in detailed plans filed with the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
The residential addition atop the existing sevenstory parking garage would add about 133 feet to the structure’s height. It would reduce the size of the restaurant space occupied by Hard Rock from 15,000 square feet to 8,000 square feet to make way for a residential lobby, and cut the number of public parking spaces by 16 to 698, some of which would be available for residents of the new condos.
“The current uses and building design … established when an elevated highway passed by, fails to take advantage of the openness of today’s Greenway,” Fortis said in its BPDA filing, referring to the former central artery of Interstate 93 that was moved underground as part of the Big Dig.
The addition has the potential to affect views from the Blackstone Block Historic District and Faneuil Hall Marketplace, but “is not expected to introduce new elements that are visually incompatible” to them, according to Fortis.
Fortis bought the approximately 1.2-acre site, which occupies a city block, for $170 million from Dock Square Parking Associates LLC in September. The garage is one of Boston’s top three highest-grossing parking facilities, according to Newmark Knight Frank, which brokered the sale. The garage originally was developed under a land disposition agreement between the original developer and the BPDA’s predecessor in 1979.
Residents of the studio to four-bedroom condos in the proposed addition would have access to an eighthfloor outdoor patio/courtyard and pool.
The redesigned garage would include valet service and possible mechanical stackers for 280 of the spaces.