Tudor Wharf
Charlestown, Massachusetts
Located in Boston’s Inner Harbor at the mouth of the Charles River, Charlestown’s Tudor Wharf is a vestige of Boston’s maritime industrial history. In the 19th century, prior to the age of refrigeration, the Wharf was the site of Frederick (the “Ice King”) Tudor’s world-wide ice-shipping operation. In more recent times Tudor Wharf served as a warehouse for newspaper and furniture companies until a tragic fire partially destroyed the pier and several buildings in the early 1990’s.
In 1998 The Summerfield Hotel Corporation proposed development of a seven-story, 183-suite hotel on the 40,000 square-foot waterfront site. Serving as Project Manager, Daylor played a pivotal role in all aspects of project development including planning, permitting, community relations, and consulting team management.
The proposed Summerfield Hotel Corp. project was a complex exercise in urban planning, regulatory permitting, and community outreach. It sat within multiple regulatory jurisdictions and was the subject of much scrutiny by public agencies, interest groups and neighborhood organizations. Daylor performed extensive work on the approval process and ultimately garnered public agency and community support for a non-maritime-use development plan.
A merger involving Summerfield Suites precluded the development of this hotel. In early 2000, Daylor introduced this development opportunity to National Development, owner of the adjacent Constitution Park office buildings. National Development acquired the property, proposing a project change: a slightly smaller development with underground parking.
Just like the proposed Summerfield development, the National Development project falls under the regulatory aegis of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Aviation Administration, Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, Office of Coastal Zone Management, Department of Environmental Protection, Boston Redevelopment Authority, Zoning Board of Appeals and Landmarks Commission, to name a few. Comprising both public and private tidelands, the entire site is also subject to Massachusetts General Law Ch. 91. (A statute dating from colonial times according rights to maritime land-use and public access. Since the 1980’s, this law has been stringently interpreted and enforced, making regulatory approval of “non-maritime-dependent” land use extremely rare.)
Permitting for all of these agencies was well underway at the time of the Summerfield withdrawal. Daylor secured permission to move forward on the new project proposal using the previous Summerfield filings. After filing a Final Project Impact Report in the fall of 2000, Daylor will resubmit on each of these permits on behalf of National Development.
