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The Fenway rising, continued


So who’s likely to live in all this new residential space? Many of the new residents could be drawn by the easy walking distance to Longwood Medical Area (LMA), which employs 37,000 people — soon to be 47,000. Harvard, for instance, has already reserved a block of apartments in Trilogy, the first building going up. "Over the next 10 years, the institutions — not just the medical institutions but the colleges in the Fenway — all have plans for increasing the research that’s done and the number of people coming," says Marilyn Swartz-Lloyd, president of MASCO (Medical Academic and Scientific Community Organization Inc.), which represents 21 institutions in the Fenway.

Put simply, the Fenway — where less than 10 percent of 33,000 current residents live in homes they own, the lowest rate in the city — plans to avoid the inevitable creep of gentrification by the accelerated development of block after block of new, high-end housing. Just 10 percent of the units in these new residential towers will be "affordable" — and even those will be pricey, since the median area income used to calculate "affordable" includes Brookline, and thus skews higher than decidedly lower-income Fenway itself. "We’ve been frustrated that there haven’t been more ambitious requirements for affordability," says Carl Nagy Koechlin, executive director of the nonprofit Fenway Community Development Corporation.

Already the neighborhood is showing signs of change, from the Landmark Center on one end, to the Hotel Commonwealth with its upscale restaurants and bars on the other. BU, which controls property all around Kenmore Square, has been active in improving that space, says Beale. By the ballpark, the model has been set by the Game On! restaurant/pub, developed by the Sox and Lansdowne mogul Patrick Lyons. Even some Lansdowne Street clubs — the Tiki Room, Game On!, and Jillian’s — have started opening for lunch and/or dinner. And now the Cask ’n Flagon, currently a perfectly fine local watering hole, intends to go to the Boston Licensing Board next week with plans, after expunging its tenant Gold’s Gym, to create just what the neighborhood clearly needs, a new bar with a capacity of 1500; replete with roof-deck. At the same time, colleges like BU and Northeastern are pulling some of the 110,000 college students living within two miles of Kenmore Square out of the neighborhoods and into campus housing. Even Wentworth, once strictly a commuter school, just completed a dorm to house 363 students.

"The universities were pushed by the city, appropriately, to build more dorms on campus," says Bill McQuillan, president of Boylston Properties. "The West Fenway has been cleaned up," from when it was dominated by college students, he says.

PLAYING NICE — FOR NOW

For its part, the Red Sox will shape the development of the other half of Boylston Street, in ways they have not revealed and probably have not yet decided. The team has bought the upper Boylston McDonald’s, Sophia’s, and the WBCN building, and is negotiating with Sage & Company to co-develop a hotel to replace the old Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge.

With its hands in all those properties — along with the recently purchased Town Taxi building and the team parking lot on Brookline Avenue — the Sox will be able to dictate, in large measure, development nearest the ballpark.

The Sox stood fast against developer John Rosenthal’s original plans for One Kenmore, which included two high-rise buildings over the Mass Pike’s "Parcel 8," directly behind Lansdowne Street. It’s not just that the CITGO sign would have disappeared from Fenway’s view; so would a lot of that postcard-perfect blue sky beyond left field. And the Sox probably weren’t too keen on seeing dozens of apartments with, essentially, free upper-deck luxury-box seating for every game.

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Issue Date: November 25 - December 1, 2005
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