The former Boys Club building in Worcester’s Lincoln Square is being proposed for redevelopment as part of a 95-unit senior living facility.
The project would be built by Boston-based WinnCompanies, the same firm that created the Voke Lofts apartments a block away and the Canal Lofts on Water Street. The development is slated to begin next year.
As a first step, Winn needs City Council approval to construct a new five-story addition to the old Boys Club to include 64 of the project’s units. Some of the building would rise over a road tunnel that passes under Lincoln Square, for which Winn is proposing to pay the city $100,000 for what are known as air rights for building above the roadway.
City Manager Edward Augustus, who will ask for the council’s approval Tuesday, is recommending that money be used to improve a war memorial in front of the building, which he said Winn has agreed to maintain in perpetuity.
Winn bought the site from the city in 2019 for $300,000 and previously proposed in a partnership a school for children with autism. Those plans fell apart later that year.
Winn still requires permitting approval for the project. It is slated to include both market-rate units and those set aside under affordability restrictions.
The former Boys Club building, which dates to 1889, has been vacant for about 15 years, when the then-Boys & Girls Club moved out. Its redevelopment would join more than 100 new apartments at Courthouse Lofts, a renovation diagonally across Highland Street at the former Worcester County Courthouse. On the other two sides of the Boys Club building, two other buildings remain vacant: the Worcester Memorial Auditorium, and the 87,000-square-foot former Morgan Construction Co. building owned but unused by MCPHS University.
