A new try at renewal in the old West End

Boston Globe

19 hours ago

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Today, the half-century-old superblock is a windswept wasteland, a solemn reminder of what can go wrong when you level a vibrant neighborhood.
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The six-story Hurley, along Cambridge and Staniford streets, has been emptied of the state labor department employees who once toiled inside. The vastly underused Lindemann, with its M.C. Escher-style staircases, still houses Department of Mental Health patients and facilities who will need to be accommodated in the redevelopment, or nearby. (Both buildings need hundreds of millions of dollars worth of repairs.) Few people use — or are even aware of — the courtyard in the midst of it all, a hidden crown jewel. And a prime spot for open space along Merrimac Street, at the foot of those windy Lindemann stairs, is no more than a makeshift parking lot surrounded by chain-link fencing. Plenty of untapped potential, in the heart of the city.
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The center courtyard at the Lindemann and Hurley complex.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
As Adam Baacke, commissioner of the state's Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance, put it at a community meeting in early June: These two structures were built at a time when the prevalent thinking was about how best to 'defend yourself from a city,' rather than embracing your surroundings the way most urban real estate projects are designed today.
This request for proposals — which could go out later this year — would be
Seven bids were initially submitted for the site the first time around, with
hinged on building a lab tower alongside the Hurley. As the market for new labs cratered, so did the hopes for that Hurley redo.
This next attempt will differ in key ways. This time, the Lindemann, considered more architecturally significant than the Hurley, is also part of the project. Bidders will no longer have to accommodate nearly 700 state office workers, who have since decamped for other locations. And the
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It's unclear just how many housing units could go up on the block, either in redeveloped versions of the Hurley or the Lindemann, or in a newly built tower. But the number would likely be hundreds, if not thousands. The site's zoning allows for far more development than what's there today — roughly four times the combined square footage of 570,000 square feet. And a tower could be up to 400 feet high, only modestly shorter than the two that have overtaken the old Government Center Garage next door. DCAMM hopes to pick a developer next year, according to a timeline the agency provided, and start construction in 2029.
For land-use lawyer Matthew Kiefer, an attorney at Goulston & Storrs who worked on the Leggat McCall project, the state's new attempt to bring life to this sterile superblock is particularly intriguing.
An aerial view of the Charles F. Hurley Building in Boston on April 13, 1973.
Ed Jenner/Globe Staff
In some ways, Kiefer said, the site is even more promising as a residential project than for office and labs, due to its proximity to stores and restaurants. Plus, North Station is just steps away.
A talented design team, he added, could draw out the virtues of the Brutalist architecture to create a unique residential environment. He sees it as a fascinating challenge, but threading this giant block back into the neighborhood is not for everyone.
At the June 4 community meeting, held in the West End Museum, with faded photos and artifacts from the old neighborhood hanging on the walls, community members spoke up about what they would like to see take shape around the corner. Shops along the fortress walls to enliven the street. A new public school, to replace the one that was demolished there in the 1960s. Preservation of the two 25-foot-tall murals in the Hurley lobby. More greenery, to break up all the hardscape. And of course, something to commemorate what was lost in the name of progress so many years ago: a memorial, for example, or a new home for the museum.
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Perhaps no testimony was more compelling than that of Quincy's Ron Iacobucci. His first home was on Norman Street, a roadway that no longer exists — disappeared under the Hurley and Lindemann. His grandparents settled in the West End from Italy, and his parents lived there until the Boston Redevelopment Authority took their home, along with the homes of thousands of their neighbors, to make way for a swath of new development from the old Scollay Square to the Charles River. (Iacobucci's mom was friends with arguably the most famous West Ender, actor Leonard Nimoy.)
Iacobucci, who was only two when his family was uprooted, pleaded with state officials to give preference in any new affordable housing on the site to displaced West Enders and their descendants. This should be more than a development project, Iacobucci said, it's the chance to write a new chapter to the West End's story, one that's focused on justice and equity.
That's asking a lot of any construction project, even a massive one like this. But maybe, finally, the sins of the past can offer a promising opportunity for the neighborhood's future.
Jon Chesto can be reached at