What we know so far about the newly named Fenway Corners development
The area surrounding Boston’s beloved baseball stadium is one step closer to getting an extreme makeover.
The area surrounding Boston’s beloved baseball stadium is one step closer to getting an extreme makeover, but Fenway-fundamentalists should fear not: Boston builder WS Development promised to preserve the neighborhood’s “grit and grain” in a planning document it submitted to the Boston Planning and Development Agency on Feb. 4.
The project, which was first proposed in January 2021, has gone through a number of revisions in response to input from stakeholders and community members. The latest iteration includes a new name for the 5.32-acre development: Fenway Corners. Here’s what we know about it so far:
The property
The development consists of four blocks (13 privately owned parcels) surrounding Fenway Park. The largest of the lot, referred to as the Jersey Street block, is bordered by Jersey Street (formerly Yawkey Way), Brookline Avenue, and Van Ness Street. It’s currently home to a number of souvenir shops and food vendors along Jersey Street, including the Red Sox Team Store, owned by the D’Angelo family.
There’s not much on the project’s other three blocks right now. The Brookline and Van Ness blocks are surface parking lots, and the Lansdowne block is home to a multilevel parking garage sandwiched between the House of Blues and the sports bar Cask ‘n Flagon.
The project area also covers the air rights above the Mass. Pike, known as “Parcel 8.” Though there are no plans in place for developing that space yet, the Red Sox, one of the partners on the development team, voiced plans earlier this year to integrate Parcel 8 into the project. (John Henry, who owns Boston Globe Media Group, is also an owner of the Red Sox.)
The project
The project calls for more than 2 million gross feet of office, research, retail, and residential space spread among several new buildings.
Five of those buildings are destined for the Jersey Street block, as is an underground garage with room for 690 vehicles. The buildings will have a combined 855,000 square feet of gross floor space, with a maximum height of 230 feet. The Jersey block will also be the site of 216 new housing units.
The Brookline block will have another building, this with 624,000 square feet of space and 630 underground parking spaces. It could reach 270 feet high.
Smaller buildings are planned for the Van Ness and Lansdowne blocks, with 312,000 and 250,000 gross square feet of floor space, respectively. The Van Ness block will also have an underground parking garage with room for roughly 290 vehicles.
It’s not just the buildings that are getting an update, however. The project calls for the creation of an amphitheater and public roof deck along Jersey Street, in an effort to transform the space into a “year-round, day-in and day-out pedestrian plaza,” according to the Project Notification Form. The hope is that the development will “create significant new public gathering spaces” without turning the beloved stadium into a “sports theme park,” according to the draft project impact report.
In addition to outdoor spaces, the latest iteration of the plan calls for improved bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure and the creation of the Fenway Family Center, a 100-seat day care for families in the Fenway neighborhood.
Building is expected to start next year and will take place in phases, Yanni Tsipis of WS Development said in an e-mail, with a separate phase for each of the four blocks. All said and done, the project will cost an estimated $2 billion and will take five to seven years to complete, Tsipis said.
The developers
Chestnut Hill-based WS Development partnered with Fenway Sports Group Real Estate (a subsidiary of the Red Sox’s parent company, Fenway Sports Group) and the D’Angelo family (owners of the ‘47 brand and the Red Sox Team Store on Jersey Street) for the project.
WS Development has experience working on projects of similar caliber in Boston, developing 7.6 million square feet of space in the Seaport, which it describes on its website as the “single largest active development project in Boston’s history.” The latest piece of that mammoth undertaking, an indoor-outdoor retail space dubbed The Superette, is set to open this spring.
Kelly Garrity can be reached at [email protected] Subscribe to our free real estate newsletter at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us on Twitter @GlobeHomes.
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