Work Begins on Suburban Boston Apartments
Wood Partners has closed on an 11.6-acre site in suburban Boston on which it plans to build Alta at the Estate, an 155-unit apartment property.
By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor
Watertown, Mass.—Wood Partners has closed on an 11.6-acre site in suburban Boston on which it plans to build Alta at the Estate, an 155-unit apartment property. Construction is slated to begin at once, with completion in March 2014.
Alta at the Estate will consist of two four-story apartment buildings, one two-story townhouse building, and a clubhouse building. The development will include 81 one-bedroom units, 73 two-bedroom units and one three-bedroom unit, as well as 256 parking spaces.
Watertown is a relatively affluent part of metro Boston, with median household income of about $89,850 in 2011, according to the Census Bureau, which is 39 percent higher than the Massachusetts average. Apartment vacancies are quite low in metro Boston—below 4 percent market-wide—spurring developers (such as Wood Partners) to get their projects out of the ground. As of 4Q12, according to Marcus & Millichap, about 4,800 new multifamily rental units were under way, with half of those scheduled to open inside Mass. 128 by 2014.
According to Wood Partners, the property’s design will echo the area’s Revolutionary-era history, with brick and clapboard facades and detailing, gables, dormer windows, varying eave lines, and two-story bay and double-hung windows. All of the apartments will include vinyl plank wood flooring, granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances in the kitchens and tile floors in the bathrooms.
The general contractor is WP East Builders-Watertown LLC, with architecture by the Architectural Team Inc. Roy Papalia of Carpenter and Co. brokered the site sale by LIG-JCDS Realty Holding Co. LLC.