Berklee Sets Expansion on Mass. Ave.
About $65 million in new construction by the Berklee College of Music will provide recording studios, space for student performances and dormitory housing for some 350 students, according to plans released by the college.
Students toting musical instruments or lugging them in backpacks are a feature of Berklee’s Back Bay neighborhood, along with such music and musical-instrument stores as Daddy’s Junky Music. Music from practice spaces can often be heard on the street.
The proposed 16-story building at 168 Massachusetts Ave. is to have a 400-seat dining hall, upper-floor practice rooms, student lounges and a fitness center. School officials anticipate glass-fronted, street-level retail stores and the possibility of a restaurant offering student-performed music.
Berklee is spread among 21 buildings near Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street. The college’s expansion project, aimed primarily at student housing, would replace a McDonald’s restaurant and Berklee-student mail center at the 13,000-square-foot site.
The building site is a block and a half from the busy Berklee Performance Center at Mass. Ave. and Boylston, toward the expansive Christian Science Center and, just before Huntington Avenue, Boston Symphony Hall. Construction is to begin next fall and should finish by late 2013, the college said in a statement.
The site was sold to Berklee in 2009 by the First Church of Christ, Science for $6.25 million. The Mary Baker Eddy Library, the Mother Church complex, lawns and a large, popular reflecting pool dominate that stretch of Massachusetts Avenue.
City officials have spoken favorably of the project, but note that there will be hearings before approval is granted. With some 4,100 students (30 percent female) in degree-granting programs, the independent Berklee is the world’s largest college of music.
“Students from 80 countries outside the U.S. account for approximately 25 percent percent of the student population,” the college said in the statement.
Student housing, or the lack of it, has become a political issue, mostly in student ghettos such as the Alston neighborhood, miles away on the other side of Boston University. Politicians and older neighbors have complained about parties in student-occupied private apartments.
Another Berklee housing-expansion project is planned at the present site of the Berklee Performance Center and a former bank building housing academic and administrative spaces. Called the Crossroads development, it would include a new performance center, dorm rooms, classrooms, and student-life space, the college said.
Neighborhood groups have opposed the project, prompting the school to reduce the floors from 29 to 24.
“The college's residence-hall space is limited,” said a Berklee statement. “Not everyone who wants to live in the residence halls is able to do so. Most students at the college, including many entering students, live in private apartments in the neighborhoods near the college.”
When the 168 Massachusetts Ave. building is completed, Berklee would have dorm space for more than 1,200 students.
Posted by Dan Sheridan
