Last month at the Boston Music Awards, fans assembled at Big Night Live got a surprise presentation — an unannounced look at building design plans for the new Great Scott in Allston. Now, as the team behind the resurrected rock club this week submits its Project Notification Form to the City of Boston, everyone else is getting a chance to see the new venue as well.
As we reported a few months back, the new Great Scott — iconic green awning and all — will be located at the corner of Harvard Avenue and Cambridge Street, and now boasts an official address of 1 Harvard Ave. The space is just down Harvard Avenue from its former, 40-year home on Commonwealth Avenue to a newly-constructed building where sister venue O’Brien’s Pub now sits.
O’Brien’s will be relocated to the Cambridge Street side of the building, with a similar 75-person capacity to what it currently holds. Great Scott’s capacity will rise from 240 at the old spot to 300. And the clubs are part of a massive new building with a 17,870-square-foot imprint and several stories of apartments — 139 in total — that will redefine that already-bustling corner of Allston.
“The proposed project is focused on reviving Allston’s legendary Great Scott music venue, which closed during the COVID-19 pandemic,” states the PNF. “It consists of the demolition of the existing structures occupying the site and the construction of a mixed-use building occupying approximately 97,300 square feet of gross floor area with approximately 139 rental residential units on the upper floors, and a ground level featuring a new, 300-person capacity performance space for Great Scott, the retention of O’Brien’s Pub, additional retail/commercial space, and off-street parking spaces for three car-sharing vehicles.”
Construction is expected to last roughly 18 months, and ground could break as soon as four months after approval from the city.
The PNF was submitted to the Boston Planning & Development Agency on Monday (January 27), and prepared by Maynard-based Epsilon Associates, Inc., in association with CambridgeSeven, Dain Torpy, Howard Stein Hudson, enviEnergy Studios, McPhail Associates, and Verdant Landscape Architecture.
The plan was submitted by Allston Live Management LLC, the new Great Scott ownership group that features longtime booking agent Carl Lavin, developer Jordan Warshaw, and Vanyaland publisher Paul Armstrong.
Check out additional renderings below:
