Two South Boston Plans Account for 43 Percent of the 5,485 Units Now Under Article 80 Review

Boston's Planning Department has 44 development projects under Article 80 review that together propose 5,485 housing units, and two South Boston plans, the Mary Ellen McCormack redevelopment and the Reserved Channel development, account for 2,360 of them, or 43 percent, according to the Article 80 development-projects dataset on Analyze Boston.

Article 80 is the section of the Boston Zoning Code that governs the review of larger developments. The Planning Department says the process looks at a project's design, its effects on the surrounding community and its place in the city as a whole. The dataset, which the city updated on Oct. 26, lists every project the department has handled, with its status, its neighborhood, the last date a filing was made, the last date the board approved something, the number of residential units and the gross square footage.

Of the 999 records, 592 are marked construction complete, 259 board approved, 93 permitted or under construction, 44 under review and 11 at the letter-of-intent stage. The board-approved projects represent 28,116 units and the 93 permitted or under-construction projects another 9,002. The 44 under review are the next wave, and 16 of them are large projects. Those 16 account for 4,611 of the 5,485 units, or 84 percent. The other 28 are small projects with a combined 874 units. Three of the 44 list no residential units.

The largest by units is the Mary Ellen McCormack Redevelopment in South Boston, at 1,310 units and 1.64 million square feet. The dataset says the Development Plan and the Supplemental Information response were filed for the first phase of the project, covering the northernmost 18 acres of the roughly 31-acre master plan site on Old Colony Avenue. It lists Oct. 9, 2026 as the last filing and Dec. 14, 2023 as the last board approval.

Second is the Reserved Channel Development on the South Boston Waterfront, with 1,050 units in a proposed 1.56 million square feet across eight new buildings. The project description lists residential housing, a commercial research laboratory and ground-floor retail. Its last filing is dated Oct. 6, 2026, and it shows no board approval date.

Third is 140 Providence St., the Back Bay office-to-residential conversion known as 31 St. James Ave., at 476 units. The city's Oct. 14 public meeting notice describes converting the upper floors of the existing building to about 476 dwelling units in roughly 501,000 square feet, with about 41,000 square feet of ground-floor and basement retail and restaurant space and no on-site parking. The Beacon Hill Times reported that the developer, the Vanbarton Group, plans a unit mix of 140 studios, 198 one-bedrooms, 58 one-bedrooms with home offices, 70 two-bedrooms and 10 three-bedrooms, and that the city's comment period ran through Oct. 26. The paper also reported that the building, known as the Park Square Building, was sold at foreclosure in April for $95 million to LNR Partners, a subsidiary of Starwood Property Trust.

The next two are the North Station Gateway Project in the West End, which proposes about 420 residential units in a roughly 40-story, 447-foot tower along with about 300 hotel rooms, and 41 Berkeley St. in the South End, a Notice of Project Change that lists a Tremont component with about 234 units and a Franklin Union component with about 57. Together the five largest projects hold 3,568 units, or 65 percent of the pipeline.

By neighborhood, Dorchester has the most projects under review, 10, but they add up to 343 units, an average of about 34. South Boston's single project in the list, the McCormack plan, holds 1,310 units. East Boston has six projects with 174 units, Jamaica Plain four with 258, Brighton four with 86, and the West End two with 636.

Several entries have been in the dataset's under-review category for a long time, judged by their last filing date. A 26-unit project at 706 Dudley St. in Dorchester shows Aug. 29, 2019 as its last filing, and a 157-unit project at 409 Huntington Ave. in the Fenway shows Sept. 8, 2022. The dataset does not say whether those projects are active, stalled or awaiting a board date, and the last-filed date is not the date a review began.

The list is a snapshot of filings, not a forecast of what will be built. A project under review can be changed, delayed or withdrawn, and the unit counts are the proponents' proposals. Each project's page on the Planning Department's site carries its documents and its public-comment deadline.