Ex-BRA chief's firm buys East Boston site
JPI Inc., the Texas-based apartments company run locally by former Boston Redevelopment Authority director Thomas N. O'Brien, has agreed to buy the long-dormant East Boston development site Clippership Wharf for $17 million.
JPI, which is rapidly expanding in the Boston area, has signed an agreement with the co-owners of the property, WinnDevelopment of Boston and New York developer Stephen M. Ross.
"The timing couldn't be better," said Alan Eisner, a spokesman for Winn, referring to the red-hot market for real estate investments that has persisted into 2007. "JPI is a credible, well-capitalized developer who will do a great job."
The 13-acre site near Marginal Street and the MBTA's Maverick Square Station has been beset by years of false starts. Previous plans for Clippership Wharf called for condominiums. But that corner of the residential market has gone soft.
For example, next door on the East Boston waterfront, Roseland Property Co. and Lennar Corp. recently halted work for the time being on East Pier, a $275 million condominium and retail complex, because of cost increases and a weak residential market.
JPI is instead expected to build apartments, which are enjoying a stronger market now.
O'Brien declined to comment.
In April, JPI made its biggest purchase yet in the area, buying 1,620 apartments in Framingham for $222 million.
WinnDevelopment chairman Arthur Winn, with local partner Roger M. Cassin, has spent more than a decade planning Columbus Center, an ambitious mixed-use development in the Back Bay and South End. The project has been delayed because of rising construction costs and now has a price tag of at least $650 million.
Eisner said Winn and Ross's decision to sell Clippership was "unrelated" to the Columbus Center situation.
Clippership Wharf was planned in the mid-1980s as a 475-unit condo project, once priced at about $80 million, but neighbors objected to the size. The Boston Redevelopment Authority approved it in 2003 as a four-building, 400-unit complex with 670 underground parking spaces, priced then at $190 million.
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com. 
