September 9, 2016

AvalonBay tweaks its design for 283 apartments at 210 Wall St.

Image courtesy Ankrom Moisan [enlarge]

The saga of 210 Wall St., where the 25-story McGuire apartment building was demolished in 2011 due to construction defects, is about to enter a fresh chapter.

AvalonBay Communities and architect Ankrom Moisan will show a slightly tweaked design for their 24-story tower at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 20 to the Downtown Design Review Board at City Hall. The project is now called Avalon Belltown.

AvalonBay is a publicly traded, Virginia-based housing developer that bought the 25,492-square-foot site in April for $24 million. The half-block site is on the east side of Second Avenue between Wall and Vine streets.

The current proposal for Avalon Belltown has 283 apartments, 9,900 square feet of ground-floor retail and 249 parking spaces below grade.

AvalonBay's Brian Fritz said the goal is to start construction by the end of the year and take about 24 months.

The complex would have a six-story podium with an offset mass of two boxes on top. The middle box (floors 7-12) would be clad in brick. The south box (floors 7-24) would be clad in glass window wall, Fritz said. The podium facade would have different materials and offsets to vary the appearance and reduce the bulk.

Fritz said the variety of setbacks and rooftops will allow decks to be “sprinkled throughout, on every level.”

AvalonBay will act as its own contractor. Brumbaugh & Associates is the landscape architect. Coughlin Porter Lundeen is the engineer.