With the Greenway abutting one side and downtown Boston on the other, investors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Chinatown development, with more than 1,000 residential units to be built over the next few years.
Five rental and condominium projects are in the pipeline for the city’s Asian center, with groundbreaking slated this summer on Kensington Place — a 390 unit-rental tower at the corner of Washington and LaGrange streets. On the border of Chinatown, construction on another 14-story residential tower at Hayward Place is also set to begin.
“What’s exciting about Chinatown is the locale. You are right next to the Greenway, right on the edge of the Theater District and you border Downtown Crossing,” said Randi Lathrop, deputy director of community planning at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. “You also have this cultural aspect of Chinatown. When you walk into Chinatown, you know you are in Chinatown.”
According to Kirk Sykes, a managing director with the New Boston Real Estate Fund, a company developing 325 units on a vacant parcel (known as Parcel 24) bordering Hudson Street, there’s a need for residential property in the area.
“No place in Boston has the diversity of ethnicity, activity and transit proximity,” said Sykes, who is working with the Asian Community Development Corporation on the project. “All of these characteristics, combined with the scarcity of high-quality, multifamily sites on the Greenway, make this a fabulous place to live.”
