$900M housing development breaks ground in Boston's Seaport District

Dive Brief:

California developer Cottonwood Management broke ground Tuesday on a $900 million Boston housing development that is the second-biggest project of its kind in the city's Seaport District, according to The Boston Globe.
The Echelon Seaport project will deliver a mix of 733 apartments and condominiums across three towers, which consist of 1.3 million square feet. The project will also feature courtyards and a restaurant- and retail-lined central plaza.
The three buildings, which should be complete in 2020, will also be a significant source of much-needed new, for-sale housing in the district.

Dive Insight:

Also under development in the Seaport District is the $800 million, 23-acre, mixed-use Seaport Square, which made ConstructConnect's May list of the 10 biggest project starts in the country. The 6.3-million-square-foot project will feature almost 3 million square feet of housing, more than 1 million square feet of office space, 1.25 million square feet of retail and 1,000 hotel rooms.

The city of Boston as a whole is seeing an incredible amount of commercial growth. According to a May report from The Wall Street Journal, the city has 14 million square feet of property under development, which is in addition to the 40 million square feet permitted and getting ready to start construction. About 20% of total square footage is dedicated to office space, and the rest represent apartment and condominium projects.

In the midst of all this development, Boston officials have introduced the Go Boston 2030 Vision and Action plan, a $4.7 billion initiative that will upgrade and expand the city's transportation infrastructure through 58 key projects. One of the goals of the plan is to promote alternative forms of transportation, such as bicycles and rail.

Along with all this construction activity, however, has come concerns about potential dangerous working conditions in the city. In October of last year, two workers were killed in a city trench accident, and when it was discovered that their employer had a long record of safety violations, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh proposed new legislation that would allow city officials to deny permits based on a company's safety record.

The Boston City Council approved that regulation in December, and construction companies must now submit their records of Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations along with permit applications.