| The newly-restored building on the corner of Marlborough and Arlington streets, known as Zero Marlborough, has only four of its 12 units left to be sold, and the first residents are moving in this week. Developers said they may have squeaked under the economic wire, timing-wise.
All seems happy now, but it was a little tense early on, with a battle over parking marring an otherwise welcome transformation that saw an historic Art Deco jewel sparkle once again along the Public Garden.
The building was constructed on the remains of an old 1929 townhouse, a 12-story, 40,000-square-foot art deco building with floor-through apartments. It was a dormitory for the Katharine Gibbs School from 1953 to 1988, and an Emerson College dorm from 1988 to 2006.
The Emerson building housed 160 beds, or the equivalent of 40 units under the zoning code. Broker Tracy Campion, president of Campion and Company Fine Real Estate, sold the building, one of four she sold for Emerson, which moved over to the Theater District. Since then, she’s been working on renovations with the buyer, a Sea-Dar Construction-led investor group, who bought the building in August 2006 for $12.8 million.
They planned to restore the building back to 12 units, for a luxury condo building complete with valet and concierge and views of the Public Garden.
Sea-Dar president Jean Abouhamad has plenty of experience renovating townhouses on Beacon, Commonwealth, Exeter and Marlborough streets, so he is very familiar with working within the tight confines of Back Bay.
Still, he became nervous when the building’s investors wanted to create parking on the basement level. It’s not a bad idea, since area parking is competitive, and a luxury building without parking would be hard to compete with other similar area developments.
Early on, they asked the neighborhood groups for a curb cut on Marlborough Street, for a ramp into what would be a basement garage with 15 spaces. The building’s concierge would park the cars by stacking them two or three high.
Some residents liked the idea, because it would reduce area demands on residential street parking, and a luxury condo with parking would positively impact property values.
But neighbors and members of the Neighborhood Association of Back Bay were concerned about breaking into the façade of an historic building. They also worried about safety and traffic issues created by cars entering and exiting across the sidewalk from a gated driveway.
“We are opposed,” Susan Prindle, chair of the association’s architectural committee, said back in 2006. “If those are addressed with alarms or flashing lights when the gate is opened, it heightens our architectural concerns.”
Prindle recalled that the builders had cited as precedent the loading dock across from the old Atlantic Monthly building, a dock that predated the Back Bay Architectural Commission. “We didn’t see that as a precedent,” she said.
State Representative and Back Bay resident Marty Walz also said back then that the garage area could instead be used for more residences. “There is a housing shortage,” she said. “Why use housing space for parking? The condos will be saleable without parking.”
Walz also worried that the curb cut would set a precedent for other developers who would want the same thing. Abouhamad argued that it wouldn’t set a precedent because it was one of the few buildings in the Back Bay landlocked from the public alley that runs behind Marlborough Street residences. “There are very few residences in the Back Bay that don’t have access to alley parking,” he said.
In the end, the Back Bay Architectural Commission rejected the plan.
Today, Abouhamad is philosophical on the garage. “It would have helped my sales to have a garage in the building, but it did not ultimately hurt sales. You live with it,” he said.
Instead, they came up with a series of solutions. Parking is available at Boston Common Garage, at one of five leased spaces in back of 9-11 Marlborough St., and for sale are $250,000 spaces at the back of 124 Beacon St. that Campion was able to drum up. A valet, funded through condo fees, would retrieve and park the cars upon request. “Instead of saying, ‘You guys deal with it,’ we came up with this hybrid solution,” Abouhamad said. “You have to be creative.”
Back Bay building is an art
Also, the tricky part about construction in the tightly packed Back Bay is that there’s no room in which to work. That’s where Abouhamad’s experience comes in. Since founding Sea-Dar in 1991, Abouhamad specializes in luxury urban complexes and townhouses, because working within the confines of Back Bay requires a level of patience and surgical precision to work along tight streets with no room for debris or equipment.
It’s also tricky to try not to disturb neighbors living just a few feet away. Where do you put the construction vehicles? The debris? Not in the back alley, since the building doesn’t have any.
“In terms of working in a tight environment, you are bothering the neighbors for a year and a half. People are sleeping next door. When you use a drill, or a screw gun to put in a screw, it reverberates,” he said.
So they have to make noise, but they tried to be nice about it.
“A few things to remember is to always face up to the complaint and do something about it, not say, ‘I have the right to do that and leave me alone,’” he added.
Another disruption occurred when some workers began a strike against the development earlier in the year, alleging the use of non-union labor. Abouhamad insisted that most of the project was done using union labor, and added that “some of the unions who did not get the work picketed for a while.”
He said the union-completed projects included the carpentry trades (about 40 percent of the project labor), steel, elevator, electrical, and roofing. “Open shop trades included plumbing, HVAC, electrical, paint and tile,” he said.
He added, “Neighbors had to call the police few times to stop them, which they did,” said Abouhamad.
In the short term, it’s a noisy and dusty project. In the long term, it’s a building that adds a beautiful building with rooted neighbors, he said.
“I completely sympathize with the imposition of our work on the neighbors. It’s so demanding on their day-to-day life, but in the big picture, they know to rationalize - that in their hearts, that we are turning that building into something better from its old use, a dorm with noise and traffic and transient inhabitants who don’t care about the area homeowners,” he said.
The Winding Road
Like other large-scale construction projects in the Back Bay, developers took a serpentine route to get the building completed. Abouhamad said he attended about 20 meetings: with the Back Bay Architectural Commission, Board of Appeals, Boston Redevelopment Authority, Building Department, Fire Department, Groundwater Trust, Neighborhood Association of Back Bay (NABB), Parks and Recreation Department, Public Works, Transportation, and Water and Sewer, along with individual neighbors concerned about the project’s impact. There was a rodent problem that needed dealing with, since the building had been empty for so long.
In the project’s favor was it didn’t require any rezoning, except for groundwater charging. Because the 12 units would be replacing what was considered a 40-unit dorm, that didn’t require rezoning.
“We were very supportive of it changing from a dormitory, a less dense use than when it was a dorm,” said NABB’s Sue Prindle. “The students in the Back Bay tend to understand they live in a residential area. Nevertheless, we were pleased.”
The developers weren’t pleased with a few unforeseen surprises, such as having to work with the relatively low ceilings on each floor, which made rewiring within the ceilings a puzzle. “It was a major coordination nightmare, to solve all of the challenges. You can’t put it on paper,” said Abouhamad.
Otherwise, while renovations aren’t easy, Sea-Dar reported that they were able to preserve about 90 percent of the floor structure and façade. The new items approved by the architectural board, included some finishes, the roof, the yard gate, a new elevator and shaft area cutout, and the side yard design, along with a canopy on the front. They deliberated over the window styles, so that it would match with the building’s architectural period and area styles, choosing aluminum double-hung windows with a 3 over 3 pattern, for the units; and in the penthouse, all agreed on steel windows. “[Back Bay Architectural Commission Chair] William Young pushed us a lot on historical details. The two or three windows we have are vertical and line up nicely,” he said. “We can complain all we want as developers, about how they’re making us put in this window … The process was slow, but I can’t complain.”
Abouhamad points to the neighborhood’s attention to detail and constant monitoring as a “healthy debate” that’s responsible for the preservation of the neighborhood’s values. “In general, the city’s historical neighborhoods, such as Beacon Hill, Back Bay and the South End, are what they are because of the huge effort from the city and property owners to protect the architecture. I travel a lot, and I can see good preservations and urban planning, and bad.”
Prindle said on NABB’s behalf, the approval process is tough but necessary to preserving the Back Bay’s integrity.
“Where [builders] get into trouble is when they try to get above or around the permitting process, where things are getting complicated,” Prindle said. “You walk down the alleyways and there’s a lot of junk, which is confusing for people to see things that were approved before the commission existed.”
The finished product
The end result is a handsome, historically preserved building that just can’t be duplicated with new construction.
“The results are beautiful,” said Abouhamad. “The whole outside of the building looks new again. The yard, the gate, the lobby – I’m very proud of this product.”
So is Prindle. “It’s an interesting Art Deco building with a wonderful entrance. I think they’re doing a great job on the restoration,” she said.
Tracy Campion said she was happy when she was able to acquire the building, and loves that it has so many things going for it - location, Art Deco, and spacious floor-through units. “It doesn’t get any better than that. It’s hip; it’s not the same old, same old. It’s a blend of contemporary and tradition,” she said.
The investors had purchased the building for $12.8 million, incurred costs for renovations, a groundwater tank, legal fees, permits, construction contracts, interest on loans, buying parking spots, and put money into BRA’s affordable housing fund.
Today, the 12 units are listed at $1.6 to $9 million, although the closing prices sold for a little less than that. The average price per square foot, sold, was $1,466. The $9 million penthouse went for $8.35million, and a second-floor unit listed for $2,450 million sold for $50,000 less.
The three-level penthouse was purchased early on, in December 2006, by a buyer that the developers and broker wished to keep private. “He had the luxury to review the interior design and we accommodated whatever he wanted,” said Aboumahad. “He decided to start the design from scratch, from the outside walls in. He had to respect our common vertical limits … he made substantial changes from the original design.”
The only units left are on floors four-seven, all 3,296 square-foot units with three bedrooms, three fireplaces, three full baths, and two balconies, all listed for around $4.7-$4.8 million.
At a well-attended open house in the fourth floor unit, buyers and well-wishers sipped wine, nibbled on fancy appetizers, and admired the unit’s huge closets and park views. Tracy Campion pointed out some of the Art Deco touches.
Its concierge-staffed lobby features Elmwood paneling, limestone flooring and a fireplace of limestone and black granite. Elevators provide direct access to each home, and at the rear of the lobby is a residents-only gym.
Each unit offer park-side views, and an interior designed by the Grassi Design Group, featuring quarter-sawn white oak flooring, a spacious family room, kitchens with custom-made Anigre cabinets and desert limestone Caesarstone counters. Master bedrooms include a wood-burning fireplace and two large walk-in closets. Huge baths feature Calcutta Luna marble floors, dark-stained eucalyptus cabinetry topped with stone, and steam showers.
One new homeowner, Dale Beardon, said he chose the building based on the advice of Guy Grassi, the building’s architect. Beardon and his wife had hired Grassi to do a previous property, and they respected his opinion. Beardon grew up in Boston, and knew Arlington Street very well. “As a kid, it was such a desirable block,” said Beardon. “My little dog grew up along the Public Garden.”
So Beardon and his wife purchased Unit 1M, a garden-level unit that unlike many of the other units, had loft-sized ceilings. “It’s an Art Deco building, a Back Bay address with a lofty-type feel, nice soaring ceilings, one-floor living, the kind of cool feel a loft provides,” he said.
There is still work to be done on a few units, mostly owner specifications and punch-list items, which should be completed by the end of the year.
Otherwise, the project is a success story, said Abouhamad, but the parking was a huge worry for all involved. Without parking, they weren’t sure they’d get a good return on their investment.
“We take a risk. While you study a project before you buy it, you have to determine how you’re going to sell a unit. When you buy it, you don’t know your solution yet. I wasn’t sure, because of the parking,” he said.
All things considered, in the end he was surprised at how fast the project went – 25 months. “That’s a pretty fast turnaround,” he said. “It could have taken six more months, easily. We really hit the ground running.”
They were lucky. “Today’s market is not as fluid as it was, and so I don’t know if I was slower, if I could have sold as many as fast,” he said.
However, he added, “I don’t think the financial crisis is affecting this neighborhood as much.”
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