236 Units Coming to West First Street in South Boston

The former Shaughnessy crane yard at 295 West First Street sat behind chain-link fencing for years – a storage and crane facility on one of the most transit-connected underdeveloped parcels left in South Boston.

Jones Street Investment Partners, Prellwitz Chilinski Associates, Callahan Construction Managers, and H+O Structural Engineering are converting it into a six-story, 226,000 SF mixed-use development with 236 apartments, a publicly accessible park, and ground-floor community space.

A Transit-Connected Site That Sat Idle

The 1.5-acre block between West First and West Second Streets near E Street sits within walking distance of the Broadway Red Line station and blocks from the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Despite its location, the site remained inaccessible, fenced off, industrial, and disconnected from the surrounding neighborhood.

Jones Street Investment Partners, a Boston-based multifamily investor with a portfolio valued at over $1.8 billion across 30 assets in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, identified it as a development opportunity in a market where available infill parcels are scarce.

236 Units, a Public Park, and Ground-Floor Community Space

The building delivers 236 rental apartments across six stories, including 36 income-restricted units while achieving LEED Gold Standards with all-electric HVAC, rooftop solar, and EV charging infrastructure. It steps from 69’11” along West First Street down to 48’6″ along West Second Street, a massing shaped by both zoning requirements and community input through the BPDA’s Article 80B Large Project Review.

Ground floor space includes community, cultural, and retail space anchored by a nonprofit tenant, plus a community cafe. A publicly accessible park occupies the southeast corner of the site at West First and West Second Streets. The project also adds dozens of new street trees, a raised crosswalk, on-site bike share docking, and structured parking for 125 vehicles.

Landscape design by Verdant Landscape Architecture covers all three street frontages, E Street, West First, and West Second, with improvements focused on pedestrian safety and urban canopy expansion.

Looking Ahead

295 West First Street is expected to reach completion in Q2 2027, adding mixed-income apartments and publicly accessible open space to one of South Boston’s most transit-connected blocks. As Boston’s housing shortage persists and infill sites grow scarcer, mixed-use developments on underutilized urban land will continue to play a critical role in the region’s supply response.

For developers and architects working on mixed-use or multifamily projects requiring structural systems aligned with project performance and budget discipline, H+O Structural Engineering collaborates early to support informed decision-making from concept through construction. Your structural design fee won’t make or break a pro forma. Structure costs will.

Ready to optimize your next project? Contact H+O for a risk-free structural cost review. You owe us nothing unless we capture $100K+ in savings.