Bay Village Could Get a New Apartment Tower

Rendering via Boston Planning and Development Agency

There’s a big tower planned for Boston’s smallest neighborhood.

This week, a 131-unit apartment building was proposed for Bay Village. The 19-story tower at 212-222 Stuart St. and 17-19 Shawmut St. would be located at the edge of the historic neighborhood, offering 146,000 square feet of rental space. Banker & Tradesman notes that over the past ten years, two development proposals for luxury condos and an office building in Bay Village did not succeed.

The proposed building was designed by Howeler + Yoon and submitted by Sasaki Associates. According to a project notification form filed with the Boston Planning and Development Agency, the tower would attempt connect Bay Village to Back Bay. Transom Real Estate LLC and Wheelock Street Capital write that the building “will be a part of the transition between the two neighborhoods, and frame the Church Street pedestrian gateway to the Bay Village neighborhood from the north.”

Currently, the proposed site is partly used as a parking lot. The filing calls the site “partially vacant and blighted…creating a break in the urban fabric along Stuart Street.” To repair that fabric, there would be 3,000 square feet of ground-floor retail in the building.

The design proposal also notes the tower’s facade would be made up of a series of 3-to-9-foot-wide scalloped panels. The panels would cast curving shadows across the building at different times of day. The filing states the project would “transform a blighted urban infill site into a high-quality building.”