The Italian Community Pays for a Community Center. The Church gets Title.

The Irish Priests commit Pedophilia, the Irish Church Hierarchy decide to sell the Community Center in "Little Italy" for $6 Million to pay for Legal Settlements.

The Community Center will Not be replaced.

Further, no one in the Italian community will be able to afford the "high end" Condos.

Do you see something wrong with this picture???

The 57 one- and two-bedroom units will range in price from around $400,000 to $1.2 million when completed in November 2005. A third of the units have been reserved by buyers attracted to the neighborhood's Italian cafes, shops, and restaurants.

The $30 million project will include eight duplex penthouses, balconies, concierge services, city views, and 70 underground parking spaces. The 72,000-square-foot complex will also offer dog walking, car washing, plant watering, and event catering services.

The Boston Globe
By Christine MacDonald
Globe Correspondent
September 22, 2004

A Boston developer will break ground today on a North End condominium complex he is marketing as one of the first new residential construction projects in the historic neighborhood in more than a century.

"New construction of this scale in the North End is unique. There may have been three or four units built here and there, but this is the first new development of its size," said Byron Gilchrest, a Charlestown developer who spent a year meeting with community groups and city planners to win approval to construct 57 luxury condominiums on the site of a former community center and gymnasium.

The one- and two-bedroom units will range in price from around $400,000 to $1.2 million when construction is completed in November 2005. Gilchrest said about a third of the units have already been sold or reserved by buyers attracted to the neighborhood's Italian cafes, shops, and restaurants. Its proximity to downtown is also a plus, particularly since the neighborhood's main drag, Hanover Street, was reconnected to the rest of the city less than a week ago, he said.

The developers are casting the 44 Prince St. complex as a sign of the emerging "new North End." Ted Jankowski, chief executive of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, said the improvements to roads and pedestrian routes into and out of the neighborhood will increase the desirability of the neighborhood among well-heeled newcomers.

"The opening of Hanover Street is lifting the veil on the North End," Jankowski said. "A few years ago, the desirability just wasn't there. It was like a severed arm. Now all the muscles, tendons, and nerves are being reattached."

Jankowski added that the luxury condo prices in Greater Boston have begun to level off but remain relatively strong. He said the units are priced about the same as other luxury units in central Boston.

Designed by architect Jack French of Boston's Neshamkin French Architects Inc., the $30 million project will include eight duplex penthouses, balconies, concierge services, city views, and 70 underground parking spaces. The 72,000-square-foot complex will also offer dog walking, car washing, plant watering, and event catering services.

Some North End residents remain angry about demolition of a church community center and gymnasium razed last week to make way for the condos. Several community groups that used the building had to be relocated to another community center in the neighborhood after Gilchrest bought it from the Archdiocese of Boston for $6 million about a year ago, he said.

"The gymnasium was paid for by the North End. We bought it brick by brick," said Ben Molinari, a lifelong North Ender who remembers when the building was erected in the 1950s. "Now, it's going to be condominiums that no one in the neighborhood can afford. What they are doing is bringing in new people and killing the neighborhood."

But Gilchrest, a former assistant secretary of transportation during the Dukakis administration, won over other critics in one of the city's oldest, smallest and most densely populated neighborhoods. Concerns ranged from increased traffic and pedestrian congestion to worries that adjacent buildings, most of which were built about two centuries ago, could be damaged during construction of the new complex.

City Councilor Paul J. Scapicchio praised Gilchrest, who attended dozens of neighborhood meetings and contributed $50,000 to revamp the entrance to the North End's branch library to mitigate the neighborhood impact.

"We all bemoan the loss of the CC Center" as the community center was referred to locally, Scapicchio said.

Scapicchio and others familiar with the neighborhood, however, questioned Gilchrest's claim that the complex will be one of the neighborhood's first new residential projects in more than a century. Scapicchio, who grew up in the neighborhood, ticked off a list of other residential buildings he believed had gone up in recent decades.

Most of the development in the North End in recent decades has involved revamping existing industrial buildings, schools, and other vacant buildings in addition to some new elderly and subsidized housing, Jankowski said. 

Boston.com / Business / In old North End, new plans
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/
2004/09/22/in_old_north_end_new_plans/