Developer pitches two office-to-resi conversions in Boston

A developer plans two office-to-residential conversions in Boston, with help from a rarely used tax break.

Greg McCarthy, a developer who also owns brokerage Riverfront Realtors, submitted a pair of applications to the Boston Planning and Development Agency, the Boston Business Journal reported. He seeks a tax break that the city is promoting to spur conversions of little-used office space.

In the South End, McCarthy is planning to convert the former Boston Medical Center offices at 615 Albany Street into 24 apartments. He purchased the site from BMC and Boston University last year for $3.4 million and estimates converting and adding a floor to the empty 20,000-square-foot property will cost $4.4 million.

At 129 Portland Street in the Bulfinch Triangle district, McCarthy aims to turn a 31,000-square-foot building into as many as 25 apartments. McCarthy doesn’t own the building yet, but has an agreement in place and the lone remaining tenant will vacate once McCarthy closes. The project is expected to cost $5.6 million.

The applications are just the fifth and sixth for the tax break launched by Mayor Michelle Wu last year. The deadline to apply is in two months.

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The program provides an abatement of up to 75 percent over 29 years. Strings attached include a potential 2 percent charge on the future sale of a property, which has led some developers to try conversions without the tax benefit.

The six applications would yield 216 apartments. The largest is a KS Partners proposal to convert three connected buildings into 98 units.

A report in 2022 by Up For Growth found Boston’s home production was among the lowest in the nation and said Massachusetts as a whole needed to add 100,000 homes per year to keep up with demand, according to WBUR.

— Holden Walter-Warner