Marina Bay's 'capstone' project coming

QUINCY -- Though the grand plan for a revitalized Quincy Center hit a major snag this year, Quincy’s other major urban development, Marina Bay, is thriving and nearing completion.

Officials say a forthcoming luxury apartment complex on the west end of the Marina Bay boardwalk will finish what was started 30 years ago when developers set out to turn a largely abandoned former naval air station on the Squantum peninsula into a premier mixed-use destination.

“This will be the capstone project for Marina Bay. This will be the completion of the vision for the Marina,” Ward 6 City Councilor Brian McNamee said.

McNamee said international real-estate firm Hines Interests has purchased the rights to the boardwalk project. The company is expected to erect two buildings containing 352 apartment units and 18,500 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. The plans also call for extending the boardwalk to the state-owned Squantum Point Park and giving visitors a new place for viewing the Boston skyline.

The project, tentatively named Boardwalk Residences at Marina Bay, will fit into the existing high-end housing market at Marina Bay. The new apartments would command the highest rents in Quincy – an average of $2.50 per square foot, compared to the current $2.09 city average.

“It will be the most expensive piece of residential real estate in the city,” McNamee said. “This is a very, very high-end real estate project, and the Marina will settle for nothing less.”

With its Miami Beach-style high-rise towers, a mix of New England townhouse villages and its French chateau-inspired Seaport condos, Marina Bay’s residential developments have housed some of the region’s wealthiest and most influential people, including former U.S. Rep. William Delahunt and star Boston athletes like Tom Brady.

The area’s tax base has grown considerably since private developers William and Peter O’Connell first proposed Marina Bay in the 1980s. Today, the development has a 686-slip marina, outdoor bars, restaurants, an office park, a sportsplex, a nursing home, a clock tower dedicated to Vietnam War veterans and a regional office for manufacturing giant Boston Scientific.

Though praised by many, the new luxury apartment complex proposed for the west end of the boardwalk won’t come without its casualties. On top of razing two existing boat-storage houses, the project will eliminate what, for two decades, has been one of the most popular nightclubs in Greater Boston. After opening as The Tent, the outdoor club was named WaterWorks from 1996 to 2008, renamed the Marina Bay Beach Club for two years and then became the Ocean Club in 2010.

The club was a sore spot for some Marina Bay residents, who often complained about the club’s noise levels and  drunken patrons causing disturbances in the early morning hours. Last summer, the city shut down the club indefinitely after a string of overdoses and arrests involving the drug MDMA, commonly known as molly.

Though the club’s Facebook page contains messages like “Bring back Ocean Club” and “OC is the best place this area has all summer,” the club has seen its final days. And city leaders aren’t mourning its closure.

“Although I’m sure many folks enjoyed it over the years, to me it never did anything for Quincy other than put folks that maybe had a few too many (drinks) driving through the streets of our city,” Mayor Thomas Koch said. “So I’m not sad to see that go, quite frankly.”

Marina Bay, accessible off East Squantum Street in North Quincy, was no neighborhood at all for most of the 20th century. It was the site of the Squantum Naval Air Station until the 1950s, when the 850-acre property was sold to Boston Edison.

For the next several decades, the area lay mostly dormant, with the exception of an old airplane hangar that held various uses, including a flea market. The birth of Marina Bay came in 1981, when a joint venture led by O’Connell Brothers Construction Co. purchased 193 acres of the land from Boston Edison.

It wasn’t all rosy from there. In the early 1990s, construction at Marina Bay came to halt following a national recession, forcing the development team to file for bankruptcy. The project eventually got back on track nearly a decade later.

The city’s other major development project, a proposed overhaul of Quincy Center, is currently facing its own hurdles. Earlier this year, Koch cut ties with the city’ master development partner, Street-Works, after the firm failed to meet key benchmarks in its $1.6 billion downtown revitalization plan. Although the city has followed through with some publicly funded roadway improvements, the private development expected to create new retail, residential and office space is on hold until the city finds a new partner.

The city also has started making plans to reinvent Wollaston Center to provide more rental housing and entertainment options. However, city leaders don’t have a specific timeline for moving forward.

Although Marina Bay, both geographically and socioeconomically, is somewhat disconnected from the rest of Quincy, officials hope the success of Marina Bay sets the tone for other revitalization efforts in the city.

"Marina Bay is a great asset for the city,” Koch said. “It’s a great place to go and enjoy, but the practical part, as CEO of the city: It also produces a lot of revenue to our general fund.”

Patrick Ronan can be reached at pronan@ledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @PRonan_Ledger