YMCA unveils plans for $40m Surface Artery site
YMCA Boston yesterday unveiled plans for a $40 million facility in the North End that would become the first development on the Surface Artery after the Big Dig is done.
The 152-year-old YMCA Boston, the oldest Y in the country, is one of two nonprofit institutions vying for Massachusetts Turnpike Authority land that will remain sliced by highway on/off ramps, making construction difficult and expensive.
The YMCA, which has 16 facilities in Greater Boston, will compete with the Boston Museum Project, a group seeking to create a history and cultural museum, on the site on the Artery corridor between New Chardon and New Sudbury streets.
The proposals are due Monday. No one at the Turnpike could be reached yesterday to say when the designation would be made, but YMCA officials said they would like to begin construction in 2006 and open in 2008.
"This is a once-in-a-100-year opportunity to build a new Y in downtown Boston," John M. Ferrell, president and chief executive, said yesterday. The YMCA has built five facilities in the Boston area in the past five years.
Ferrell and Willy Sclarsic, president of Wingate Real Estate Strategies Inc., the YMCA's development adviser, yesterday showed detailed plans of the proposed five-floor, 125,000-square-foot glass structure. The plans were drawn up over the last few months by CBT/Childs Bertman Tseckares Inc. of Boston, after the Turnpike issued a request for proposals for the site.
The land is just to the north of two blocks of North End parks that are currently in design, and next to the Government Center parking garage.
Both the YMCA and the Boston History Project have been in touch with North End residents, who want the block to serve as a community center for their neighborhood.
Nancy Caruso, an unofficial spokeswoman for the North End, said the community would support any proposal that provides what is on its "wish list," which includes meeting rooms, a swimming pool, space for child care, a bingo room, and other items.
The YMCA proposal appears to include most of those features, which would be accessible to the rest of the public as well.
While mostly glass, the building has a lower, brick side facing the North End, in keeping with the older architecture there.
But it has a striking shape, carrying the curved, sharp lines of the automobile ramps underneath it all the way up to the roof.
"It's like a piece of sculpture," said Charles N. Tseckares, a principal of the architectural firm CBT.
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.
