In Brookline, a mostly vacant office park could soon become one of the largest developments in town history
Developers pitching a 600-unit housing complex say they could add even more if permitting doesn’t speed up.
On a low-slung stretch of Route 9 in Brookline near the border with Newton, a mostly vacant office park may soon give way to one of the biggest developments in the town’s history.
Brookline officials have called the 5.4 acre site in Chestnut Hill an opportunity to create a new commercial center, and developer City Realty, who purchased the site last year, presented a vision for exactly that: A new mixed-use complex with a hotel and condominium building as tall as 20 stories, including 215,000 feet of retail space, and nearly 600 units of housing.
But the sheer scale of the proposal has set off alarm bells among neighbors, and approvals have stalled amid deliberations over how much height and density might be acceptable at the site. So last week, City Realty launched a backup plan: the developer filed to develop the project under Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B housing law, which would allow them to build housing there without approval from the town, as long as 25 percent of it is affordable.
A 40B of this scale would be drastic step, especially in a town with a recent history of 40B developments that some residents loathe, and the developer emphasized they are still focused on pushing their mixed-use proposal through normal city permitting. But it was a signal that City Realty will not wait for years for Brookline — which is notoriously slow when it comes to approving development — to bless the project, which would be among the biggest ever seen in the town of 62,000.
”We’re not trying to skip or rush the process. But we’ve been meeting with the town for awhile now, and we’re at the decision making time,” said Cliff Kensington, City Realty’s director of acquisitions. “ We can’t wait around forever, and hold onto this property for years while we get unanimous approvals from every constituency. At a certain point, things need to move forward.
Town leaders in Brookline have been talking about redeveloping this stretch of Route 9 for years. Across the street from the worn-down Chestnut Hill Office Park there is a stretch of high-end retail shops. Just down the street in Newton, the Shops at Chestnut Hill is one of the region’s most popular malls.
And Brookline is eager for commercial development. Some 84 percent of the town’s tax levy is paid for by residential taxpayers. A big commercial development like this one could balance those scales, lessen the pain of future tax hikes. The developer estimated its initial proposal would net the town $9 million in new tax revenue annually.
City Realty, a prominent landlord and mid-sized developer in Boston, bought the office park in 2024 for $41 million, and initially envisioned something of a new town center, complete with three mixed-use buildings around a patch of green space. The proposed 20-story building —what would be one of the tallest buildings in Brookline — would combine hotel rooms on the lower floors with condominiums on the upper floors. The other two buildings, proposed at 12 and 13 stories, would include ground-floor retail space, apartments, senior housing, and medical offices.
It’s an ambitious proposal, but one that reflects the financial challenges of building a mixed-use site these days with significant retail — even in a corridor as known for it as Route 9.
Since town leaders want significant commercial space at the office park to increase Brookline’s tax base, City Realty says it needs significant height and density at the site to make project work financially. Housing and office space are typically more profitable than retail, so they can effectively subsidize the storefronts, but that requires more height.
In initial community meetings, some residents, worried about traffic and shadows, suggested the site should be developed to the current zoning limits, which would cap the project at roughly six stories. That is a nonstarter, Kensington said, but the developer has since floated shorter versions of the proposal, including one that would lower the hotel and condominium building to 16 stories. Even the scaled back proposals could bring more than $5 million a year in new tax revenue, a consultant hired by the town found.
“There’s a lot of recognition among residents that from a financial perspective, this project makes a lot of sense, because it may allow us to postpone a [property tax] override,” said Michael Sandman, a former Select Board member who chairs the project’s community advisory group. “But when you actually say to somebody that we’re talking about 12 story buildings and higher, it gets more complicated.”
The town’s initial goal was to present a zoning plan for the site at its May Town Meeting. But the debate over height and density has dragged on, and now Sandman expects that the zoning won’t be ready for a vote at the fall Town Meeting in November either.
That delay has raised some eyebrows at City Realty, who say they don’t want to be stuck holding a vacant office park for years. That prompted the 40B, which allows developers to circumvent local zoning in towns where less than 10 percent of housing is set aside at affordable rents. In initial filings with MassHousing, the quasi-state agency that approves 40B developments, City Realty outlined a complex of nearly 800 apartments across four buildings, 25 percent of which would be affordable.
It’s just preliminary, for now. Kensington said City Realty won’t actually pursue a 40B unless the zoning for their preferred project is still in limbo after Brookline’s May 2026 Town Meeting.
And Sandman said he believes the developer, residents, and town leaders, are getting closer to a workable solution.
“We want this project to work,” he said. “I think we’re going to get there soon.”
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