A 116-unit housing development proposed for Brookline Village would physically relocate a 175-year-old building to save it, while demolishing a different historic structure on the adjacent lot to make room.
Developer DND Homes plans to move the cupola-topped building at 40 Kent Street, originally built in 1851 as the Ginery Twitchell House and later used as an Elks Lodge, to the neighboring 40 Webster Place parcel. The existing building at 40 Webster Place, an 1856 Greek Revival/Italianate structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places, would be torn down under the proposal.
Select Board member John VanScoyoc shared photos and details from the Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on the project on X on Saturday, Aug. 1, describing the plan to preserve and move the cupola-topped building to Webster Place, where the existing structure would be demolished.
The ZBA first heard the case on Thursday, July 16 and continued the hearing on Thursday, July 30. The case remains active, though no next hearing date has been posted on the town's Zoning Relief Case Dates page.
What's being built
DND Homes, a company that says it specializes in "high-end residential projects" in Massachusetts and Cyprus, proposes merging the two lots, totaling about 20,780 square feet, and constructing a new five-story building with 116 micro-dwelling units and 24 parking spaces. The site sits at the elbow of an L-shaped street connecting Kent and Harvard Streets, steps from the Brookline Village Green Line station.
The project requires significant zoning relief. At 55 feet tall, the proposed building exceeds the 45-foot height limit in the G-2.0 zone. Its floor area of roughly 55,875 square feet far surpasses the maximum allowed under the district's 2.0 floor-area ratio, according to the Planning Board staff report.
The applicant is seeking a height bonus for public benefit, arguing that relocating and rehabilitating the 40 Kent Street building qualifies as historic preservation.
The preservation trade-off
The two buildings at the center of this proposal carry different historic designations. The 40 Kent Street building, the Ginery Twitchell House named for the railroad president and U.S. congressman who built it, is listed in the Massachusetts Historical Commission's inventory. The 40 Webster Place building, built for George Stoddard in 1856, holds the higher distinction of National Register listing.
Yet the Brookline Preservation Commission deemed the Webster Place structure architecturally "Insignificant" under General By-law Article 5.3 and approved a historical documentation package on Tuesday, Jan. 13, which must be completed before a demolition permit can be issued.
The Brookline Community Foundation, which used the Webster Place building as its offices, sold the property to DND Homes for $5.45 million, a sale recorded in the Norfolk County Registry of Deeds and reported by Brookline.News in April 2024.
What's next
The Planning Board recommended approval of the project in its June 18 staff report to the ZBA. The architectural plans, prepared by Peter Samuel Quinn, were most recently revised on June 8. The ZBA hearing remains open, and residents can watch the July 30 discussion starting at the 1:30:00 mark of the recorded meeting, linked in VanScoyoc's follow-up post.
