Massport OKs 18-story tower on Seaport parcel

Another Seaport parking lot will go the road, making way for an 18-story office tower next to the World Trade Center T station and a community center next to it.

Massport, the parcel’s owners, designated a team of companies led by Boston Global Investors as the developers of the 1.1-acre lot yesterday.

The tower, which renderings show to have the full complement of shining-glass curves and arches to fit in with the all-new Seaport, will include 600,000 square feet of office space.

The building will sprout up in the fan-shaped spot known as parcel A-2 next to the elevated road that runs from Summer Street by the Convention Center to the World Trade Center building. The World Trade MBTA stop is next to the building; from there, Silver Line buses travel to locations including South Station and Logan Airport.

Construction on the building is expected to start in about two years and take another two years.

The area is next to the Massachusetts Turnpike off-ramps and diagonally opposite the Escalon Seaport project, a massive multi-use development currently underway.

From the building’s first floor “great hall,” which will include public access up and down from the elevated road next to it that goes to the World Trade Center, a ramp will run over the off-ramp to the neighboring “triangle parcel,” a large, unusually shaped halfacre traffic island along Congress Street where the plan is to build a public community center.

“We’re calling it the South Boston Waterfront Cultural Center,” John Hynes III of BGI told the Herald. The developers will spend $25.9 million to create a public space there — 100,000 square feet of area meant for community use, with 60,000 of that indoors as the cultural center, with specific uses still to be determined, Hynes said.

Massport said Boston Global Investors’ plan for including companies owned by minorities and women played a major role in choosing the developer.