From a scrapyard to a mini-city: BPDA approves huge project in Andrew Square

The portion of the project the BPDA OK’d will include three life-science and office buildings, alongside a pair of residential buildings — a 16-story residential building with 237 market-rate units and a seven-story building with 94 units of senior housing — approved earlier this year, totaling roughly 1.4 million square feet.

When it is completed, On the Dot will represent a complete transformation of this stretch of South Boston that was a 20th-century industrial hub, turning a hazardous scrapyard into a 3.8 million-square-foot commercial and residential development with 11 buildings and 2.9 acres of open space. The project’s five residential buildings will have 1,450 apartments, 17 percent of which will be set aside at affordable rents. The project site borders National Development’s planned four-building office and lab complex farther up Dorchester Avenue.

Core hopes to break ground on the first phase of the project late this year or in early 2025.

“Andrew Square has waited patiently for the revitalization of Dot Ave as it will be part of the change so desperately needed to become a healthy and vibrant neighborhood,” Pattie McCormick, vice president of the Andrew Square Civic Association, said at the BPDA meeting Thursday. “It was hard to imagine the junkyard could become a destination, and now we’re on the cusp of it becoming a reality.”

The three buildings approved Thursday will sprout near the southernmost portion of the site, near Southampton Street. The project site, Core said, is in the flood path that runs through Moakley Park, and all the foundations of each of the buildings will be elevated above the flood plain. The project will also slope gradually from east to west to help guard the neighborhoods behind the project from flooding.

The building designs, Core said, are meant to be an ode to the old South Bay shoreline. The building at 65 Ellery St. will have elements that resemble the sails of an old schooner. The 75 Ellery St. building is designed to vaguely resemble a water lily, and the 505 Dorchester Ave. site is modeled after the mill buildings that used to dot the shoreline.

When the project is complete, planners said, they hope it will act as a conduit to South Boston and the rest of the city, improving the area for people who live there or use the T stations. Improved streetscapes and roughly 3 acres of open space, including two small parks in the first phase, will help with that, they said.

“I think this will be something beautiful for the neighborhood, beautiful for the people who have to use the transportation in that area,” said BPDA board member Raheem Shepard.

The BPDA on Thursday also chose a developer for a 4.5-acre patch of asphalt in Roxbury near Nubian Square, where two teams had pitched an affordable housing complex as part of the Wu administration’s effort to develop vacant lots in the city that were identified in a land audit last year.

Development firm Related Beal and Dream Development will transform these city-owned parking lots controlled by the Boston Water and Sewer Commission into 402 units of housing, some 330 of which would be affordable rentals. The other units would be condominiums set aside for income-restricted homeownership opportunities, which potential tenants may be able to purchase with the help of financial assistance programs. The units will be spread across four five- and six-story mid-rise buildings, and the project will include 1.2 acres of green space, including a 25,000-square-foot “central green.”

The goal, the firms said Thursday, is to stitch back together this corner of lower Roxbury between Washington Street and Harrison Avenue that was leveled in the 1970s during urban renewal efforts, while still maintaining the character of the neighborhood.

Related/Dream’s initial bid for the project showed a construction cost of around $254 million.

“We are thankful to the Roxbury community for their incredible support, and we are excited to partner with the City of Boston and neighborhood stakeholders to meet community needs while honoring the legacy of this once thriving part of Roxbury,” said Greg Minott, managing principal for DREAM.

Andrew Brinker can be reached at andrew.brinker@globe.com. Follow him @andrewnbrinker.