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Developer wants to change proposed complex off Baker Street in West Roxbury from condos to apartments

Proposed building off Baker Street

The owner of a commercial parcel between VFW Parkway, the Needham Line train tracks and Baker Street has asked the BPDA to let him build a 60-unit complex on three acres of the land as apartments rather than the condos the BPDA approved in 2017.

Through a letter from his attorney, Richard Olstein says nothing else would change in the complex at 270 Baker St., including the design of the buildings, the 90 parking spaces, most in an underground garage, and the main access through VFW Parkway and Simbroco Street. Also, eight units would be rented to people making no more than 70% of the Boston area median income.

The zoning board also approved the proposal, in 2018.

Attorney Dennis Quilty wrote that the change request is "the result of financing and construction cost limitations which have changed drastically in the years that the proponent has been advancing the project through the approvals process."

270 Baker St. notice of project change (315k PDF).
270 Baker St. approved board memo (what the BPDA board approved, 30M PDF).

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Comments

"Apartment" is a physical configuration, as distinct from, say, "freestanding house" or "townhouse".

"Condo" is an administrative category, as distinct from, say, "rental," "co-op," or "individually owned."

An apartment can be a rental, a condo, or a co-op.

Saying that they want to change from condos to apartments doesn't really make sense. What they want to do is change from units that would be sold as condominiums to units that would be rented.

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Lower quality construction, the kind that doesn't sell "luxury condos"

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At least in Boston, as long as I've been covering this sort of thing, "condos" have been things you buy and "apartments" are things you rent, so I'm going to stick with that.

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Seems to prefer "home-ownership units" and "rental units" in multi-unit buildings, but applicants themselves who are building "rental units" prefer "apartments" in the names of buildings with units for which you pay rent (we can leave "co-ops" out of the discussion because, unlike a certain city to our south, Boston has very few of them).

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It really is region dependent.. sure Condo is used everywhere in the US.

But try to tell someone who isn't from the US what a condo is. There's really no equiv for a "owned unit in apartment building". The British say "flat" but that can be either or.

And I've yet to find a spanish word that describes it best when talking with my neighbors.

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next to Home Depot - are those rentals or owner occupied units?

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The new building next to Home Depot is rentals.

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is just a formality.

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