In advance of community meeting, developer changes facade of controversial West Roxbury building from mega-bland to mansard, but doesn't reduce building's size

A developer that wants to replace a shuttered bank branch and a decaying old house on Centre Street in West Roxbury with a four-story, 21-unit condo building has filed new plans that replace the initially proposed generic cladding common to new mid-rise buildings everywhere in the country with a mansard motif.

CAD Builders will formally show off the new look at a community meeting that starts at 6 p.m. on Monday.

The developer's representative, Chris Tracey, had promised to come back with a new design at a meeting of the West Roxbury Neighborhood Council's zoning committee last month after everybody on the Zoom call basically went: Ugh.

Reviled initial proposal:

However, other than the exterior, the plans remain the same, which could raise additional criticism, based on that zoning-committee meeting, at which people expressed concern about replacing two commercial buildings - the old house was last occupied as a real-estate office - with another residential building. At last month's meeting, CAD representative Chris Tracey said CAD doesn't play games and propose buildings larger than it wants to pretend to compromise with residents but instead proposed what it really wants to build.

Unlike in other neighborhoods, where putting residential units in a commercial district has been praised as bringing more potential customers and life, nearby residents and Centre Street business owners said that they feared what one called a "condo canyon" that would mean less business for Centre Street.

In addition to the residential condos, the building would have one small commercial condo on the ground floor.

New design (1.8M PDF).