City OK's four-story mixed-use building, 58-space parking garage in Brighton

(Boston Redevelopment Authority)

A sketch of the proposed four-story residential building at 375 Market St. in Brighton.

By Matt Rocheleau, Town Correspondent

A four-story, mixed-use building and 58-space underground parking garage along Market Street in Brighton were approved by the city’s redevelopment authority last night.

The $15-million development eyeing a spring ground breaking at 375 Market St. will include 39 residential units above around 3,500 square feet of ground floor commercial space and a publicly accessible pocket park that fronts Bennett Street, the Boston Redevelopment Authority said.

Bars and convenience stores will be prohibited from renting the ground-floor commercial space “as requested by the community,” according to city officials.

The building will encompass a total of 65,700 square feet, including a 22,400-square-foot, below-ground parking garage that will also house 12 spots for bicycle parking, official said in an announcement.

Five of the 39 residential units will be reserved as affordable housing. Plans call for 34-two bedroom units, three three-bedroom units and two one-bedroom units, the announcement said.

The site’s existing vacant commercial building, most recently used as a carpentry training facility, and parking lot will be razed.

The project, scaled back recently from an initial concept, is expected to break ground in April take between 12 to 15 months to complete, according to previously filed plans.

The city says about 40 construction workers will be hired to complete the project and the development will create about 10 permanent jobs.

Brighton Park Associates, LLC, a sub entity of the project's developer Chestnut Hill-based Brookline Development Corporation, purchased the property near Brighton Center from the Boston Carpenters Apprenticeship and Training Fund last June for $1.5-million, state land records show.

Development officials said in an August project intent letter that they began meeting with direct abutters and other neighbors of the property around one month after purchasing the land and have held several more site meetings since.

After receiving concerns about the project’s scope during an initial presentation before the Brighton Allston Improvement Association in early April, the developer said they solicited city redevelopment authority officials’ help to reduce the building’s size from 103,000 square feet, including 44 residential units and 27,500 square feet of underground parking to the current plans.

At a subsequent site meeting in late-May to present the scaled-back plans, “no concerns were raised by those in attendance,” the development company’s head, Jeffrey M. Feuerman, wrote previously to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

But, in early July, the city’s inspectional services department denied the developer’s attempt to receive permits allowing construction to move forward because the project needed variance and conditional use relief from the city.

The developers instead had to seek approval through the redevelopment authority’s large project public review process, which was granted last night.

The site is located near Brighton Center, less than a half-mile south of a 100-acre chunk of the neighborhood the city is currently studying development options for, and across the street from a historic cemetery that the city says contains the graves of many of the original settlers of the area once known as “Little Cambridge.”

E-mail Matt Rocheleau at mjrochele@gmail.com.
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