Local developer Anthony Rossi is planning to build 35 apartments in a former Maimonides School building located at 2 Clark Road.
Rossi, who purchased the building in early April from the private Jewish school for $7.5 million, outlined his plans for the project in a recent interview with Brookline.News.
Under his proposal, most of the renovated building’s apartments will be one-bedroom units, “most likely” rentals, with an average size of 700 square feet.
Rossi is planning to largely maintain the outside structure of the building, although he does plan to add half a story on top.
At least five of the units will be affordable, he said, to meet the town’s “inclusionary zoning” requirements.
Rossi, a Brookline resident, said his approach is intended to “maximize quality,” not profit.
“I take existing buildings and try to incorporate that and work with the neighborhood,” he said. “If we ripped the building down it would have been a lot larger.”
Rossi and his team recently met with about 30 residents of the neighborhood.
Dave Porter, a Town Meeting member who lives on Clark Road, said that the meeting went well.
“We’re all eyes open that he’s a developer, it’s a for-profit thing, we know what his goals and incentives are. But coming out of the meeting, we’re cautiously optimistic,” Porter said. “It feels like the best case scenario for that building for us.”
Rossi made commitments to the neighbors to keep construction noise down, and try to manage traffic on the site, Porter said.
He also told the group he would look into a number of changes to benefit the neighborhood, including a new pedestrian cut-through, repairing a wall along the Clark Road sidewalk, and installing a new basketball hoop.
Rossi’s plans will require new zoning from the town, which has to be approved by Town Meeting. He has hired attorney Jeffrey Allen to lead that effort.