The following is an excerpt from Scott Van Voorhis’s article in the Banker & Tradesman:
The last thing downtown Boston needs is another ugly hole in the ground.
So it’s not surprising then that the Harvard Club, one of the city’s top civic institutions, and the Eliot Hotel, a thriving boutique, are teaming up to stop plans for an outsized new retail and office project next door on Massachusetts Avenue.
The development team behind the plans is none other than Kensington Investment Co., which tore down the historic, Vaudeville-era Gaiety Theater on Washington Street earlier in the decade to make way for a new apartment and condo tower.
Sadly, the tower has gone missing, leaving only a giant hole in the ground just a short walk through Downtown Crossing from the site of the much better known Filene’s development fiasco.
Somehow Kensington has now resurfaced with City Hall’s apparent blessing, with plans to replace a low-slung string of buildings along Mass. Ave. with a 50,000-square-foot office and retail complex.
The project’s neighbors, the Harvard Club and the Eliot Hotel, have responded by going to state Land Court in a bid to pull the plug on Kensington’s permits.
A hearing is set for Dec. 4.
