Developer Proposes $78M South End Apartment Complex

BOSTON-RF Walsh Company Inc. wants to build a 183-unit complex at the former Boston College High School on 761 Harrison Ave. near East Newton Street and Father Francis J. Gilday Street in the South End neighborhood.

The locally based development company submitted a project notification form to the Boston Redevelopment Authority in which it emphasizes that the project will create a “new housing opportunity in the South End, rehabilitate a vacant historic landscape and establish an active urban streetscape on the site of a surface parking lot.”

Bob Walsh, president of the company, tells GlobeSt.com that the project, which he estimates will cost $78 million, will be developed in two phases. The first part of the project involves redeveloping 87,500-sf of the old high school building into 66 units. The second phase involves new construction of a 173,000-sf, 117-unit building with underground parking and a landscaped courtyard.

Walsh points out that his company signed a purchase and sale agreement with the Jesuits who own the building contingent upon whether the city will permit the project. The site will need to be rezoned as an overlay district, notes Walsh, because it currently is in two different zoning areas. He emphasizes that the sale of the property was advertised last spring and is not part of the Church’s attempt to sell some of its assets to cover its settlements in the church abuse scandal.

The school building contains two connected but functionally separate wings. Both wings were slated for renovation 11 years ago but only one was rehabilitated and currently provides housing for Boston University Medical Students. The other wing has been vacant for nearly twenty years.