Meeting Street, #235

About this Property

#Proposal

A Thayer Street District Management Authority meeting heard details about the plan to replace 235 Meeting Street in their November 2020 meeting. The developer Paul Boutros planned to construct 4-story building with commercial space for a restaurant on the first and second floors with the third and fourth floors containing four apartments each. The architect for the project was Joseph McPhee of Two Cousins, LLC.

PPS objected to a few of the design details and the architect went back and forth on a few plans. The original date of construction was Fall of 2021 but the building did not come down until August 2022.¹ Other meeting minutes detailed construction progress through 2022 and 2023.

#Design Reception

Renderings were available and provided at design review meetings during 2020, but we were unable to capture them before they were taken down.

The design is pretty meh, in our opinion. The second floor overhang and chamfered corners to the ground-floor retail are pretty different when compared to other retail in the Thayer Street area. The blocky modern structure, though, feels bland and uninspired. There was an opportunity to do something that could have been a modern counterpoint to the 257 Thayer Street new apartment complex’s attempt at “classic” design, which wraps around 235 Meeting Street. Instead, this building neither blends in nor makes a strong statement of its own.

The additional apartments are likely a welcome addition to the student housing stock in the area. In theory, all of the new apartments within this four-block area in the heart of College Hill should have taken housing pressure off other parts of the city. We are unsure if that has been the case.