Details are sketchy at this point, but it appears that a new “moderately-priced” condo development has been proposed for the area around North Station.
The development is to be called “Avenir” and its address is 101 Canal Street. There will be 248 units, for sale, including 33 “affordable” units. There will be retail on [...]

Millennium Partners recently announced plans to build a 14-story, 155-foot tall residential tower behind their Ritz Carlton Towers development, in the Combat Zone Midtown neighborhood of Boston. In addition, there will be 19,000 square feet of retail space and parking for up to 250 cars.
The plot of land is called Hayward Place, and is [...]

I come here today to praise the flophouse, the home of last resort for those on the brink of homelessness.
In the old days, say, the 1950s, there were hundreds of flophouses in major cities – San Francisco, New York, Boston.
Then came urban renewal. Its goals were laudatory, to improve the lives of the very [...]

Brian McGrory of the Globe came out with a “woe is I” column, earlier this week:
It wasn’t all that long ago that people were knocking down walls to move to Boston, people from all over the country, all parts of the world, people who wanted a piece of the culture, the sports, the livability, and [...]

Two listings that I found interesting, in this week’s South End News.
The Sriberg Furniture building is for sale. It is a four-story, 19500 square foot building at 1938-1946 Washington Street. That puts it on the other side of Mass Ave.
I like that building. I’ve always been surprised that it was still in business as a [...]

So, there’s a place in New York City called Staten Island. It’s one of the five burroughs of New York. It’s also an island that you can get to by car or ferry.
What better place to put a racetrack, right?
Some people think so.
Some others, apparently, do not.
(A)fter representatives from racetrack developer International Speedway [...]

This is just bizarre, and I’m wondering whether or not they have all the facts. What the mayor is proposing is just plain nuts!
Mayor Michael Brown hopes to send 6,000 of his city’s 31,000 residents packing in what would be the country largest eminent domain seizure.
The City of Riviera Beach, Fla., is at the [...]

From Jonathan J Miller’s Matrix blog, quoting James Hagerty, in The Wall Street Journal:
“Metropolitan areas whose housing markets look less healthy, at least in the short term, include Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. All of them have growing inventories of homes and relatively weak job growth. As a result, [...]

As I sit here trying to block out the Jack Johnson music in the background, I’ve begun to think about cities, in general, and Jane Jacobs, in particular. I’ll definitely have to pick up her most famous book, as soon as I can (what are the chances that the BPL still has copies, on [...]

From the Mortgage Matters blog, by Holden Lewis, at bankrate.com:
I hope you weren’t floating your mortgage rate this week. Tuesday and today have been brutal on mortgage rates because of the economic news. Consumer confidence is up when investors had expected it to go down. Used-home sales in March rose when investors had expected them [...]