Another tall mixed-use project has been approved, at 130 Center Street, shown in the rendering above. Given the preliminary name "Calypso", this is another Swenson development, and includes 233 small (295-400ft2) "affordable" rental units. The location is opposite the end of Washington Street, by the Depot Park soccer fields. The overall design follows the familiar recent pattern: street-front retail w under-building parking behind, and multiple levels of apartments above. The U-shaped single building has its open end facing south.
The new building will replace two existing auto-related businesses: a body/paint shop and a rental agency. The photo below shows what the location looks like now, from approximately the same direction. The rendering and photo both include the hotel immediately beyond the project site, although the rendering makes the hotel look much farther away. The large tree shown in the rendering just beyond the end of the new building is fictitious. The line of much smaller street trees (and wider sidewalk) are shown in the project plans, which can be viewed/downloaded here. Other renderings show green spaces on either end of the building along Center Street - also fictitious.
It would be nice if the project included undergrounding the utilities (the existing utility poles/lines aren't shown in the rendering), but that's probably also fictitious. The submitted plans show the existing overhead lines remaining, although undergrounding could have been added as a condition of approval.
It's odd that the third auto-related business in this row (another body shop, partially-seen at far left in the photo) will remain, with its wall hard against the new adjacent building. On the other side of that lone remaining commercial business is the Blackburn House apartments. It's hard to know whether residents there will appreciate the preservation of their sunshine more than they would enjoy losing the noise and paint fumes.
