Charlestown Neighborhood Council (CNC) Chair Tom Cunha reported on Tuesday night a new developer in the Town has contacted him about the potential redevelopment of Kipo’s Pizza on Bunker Hill Street near Hays Square.
Nova Realty Trust has plans, he said, to develop 106-108 Bunker Hill St. into six units of housing, demolishing the current one-story restaurant and rebuilding an all-residential project.
The units would be two- and three-bedroom apartments with enough parking to meet requirements. There have already been meetings with abutters, and to that end the plan for roof decks on top has been eliminated.
One or two of the units will be handicap accessible, and they plan to have a dumpster that would be collected weekly.
He said Nova has been invited to the April or May CNC meeting.
•Save Pier 5 Presents
During the Open Floor period of the meeting, the Navy Yard’s Nitzen Sneh appeared to bring attention to his group’s Save Pier 5 movement and petition. The Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) put out an RFP last year, and received three proposals for development on the pier or floating on the watersheet last month. Those three have been presented to the community and are under review at the moment with a Comment Period ending on April 4.
However, Sneh and his group would like to ditch that effort completely and restore the idea of a public park on Pier 5. A park had been contemplated a few years back in the fashion of Southie’s Lawn on D, but an investigation of the footings on the pier showed it was not safe and, thus, was condemned. To use it, the BPDA says it needs to be repaired at a cost of about $10 million, or demolished.
Sneh said their movement is growing rapidly and they want to fight once again to prevent developers from profiting off of the public realm waterfront. He also mentioned that Courageous Sailing would be impacted too. Courageous currently uses a good part of Pier 5’s watersheet to maneuver out of their slips, but would be prevented from doing so under some of the plans.
Member Barbara Babin said she supports the Save Pier 5 effort.
“The BPDA won’t entertain the idea of a park because they can’t make money off it,” she said. “They will only do things they can make money on or change rent for.”
Member Karson Tager said he understood the effort, but though the floating housing concepts he saw for Pier 5 were innovative and interesting.
“We’re really not losing this space because no one my age or younger has seen it as anything other than it is now,” he said.
•Back in the Knights?
Cunha said at the outset of the meeting and at the conclusion that the Zoom meetings aren’t working for many, and he intends to have an in-person meeting with an alternate Zoom option for the April meeting. That meeting will feature the BPDA as a guest, and potentially one of the mayoral candidates.
“No matter what happens we’ll have a meeting at the Knights of Columbus in April,” he said. “This is very difficult for us to do business.”
Some members said they hoped a good Zoom component would continue as they had more than 60 people in attendance on the Zoom meeting Tuesday night, a number rarely seen at a CNC meeting in person over the years.