Combat Zone Site To Go Condo

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Combat Zone site to go condo

By Scott Van Voorhis
Wednesday, April 12, 2006

A once-desolate stretch of Washington Street in the heart of the old Combat Zone is fast becoming the luxury condo capital of Boston, with a local developer unveiling plans for a 28-story tower on Stuart Street.
    Boston-based Weston Associates is briefing local community groups in neighboring Chinatown on a proposal for a new residential high-rise that would feature six stories of hotel rooms or offices topped by 22 stories of condos, said Louis Miller, a lawyer for the project.
    The Hub's newest luxury address would take shape on a parking lot next to Jacob Wirth, an historic 19th century eatery that specializes in German food.
    The tower plan is just one of a flood of such projects in the lower Washington Street neighborhood that was once seedy and packed with strip clubs.
    However, some Chinatown activists point with alarm to a growing forest of condo high-rises on the edge of the neighborhood.
    Such projects are slowly gentrifying Chinatown and pushing up rents, contends Karen Chen of the Chinese Progressive Association.
     "This area is zoned for 150 feet and they are planning a tower twice as (tall). I am wondering whether they are taking this zoning as a joke," Chen said.
    But Miller, the project's lawyer, said the neighborhood has come a long way. "And it is going a lot further."
    A few blocks up Washington Street, condos at New York-based Millennium Partners' twin glass- and-steel residential towers routinely fetch prices in the $1 million range and up.
    Just across the street, national apartment developer Archstone-Smith is preparing to open a 28-story tower this summer.