Allen & Major Associates, Inc. (A&M), as part of the development team of Pro Con, Inc. and XXS Hotels, received the 2017 EBC James D.P. Farrell Award for Brownfields Project of the Year Award, presented by the Environmental Business Council of New England (EBC). The award was in recognition of the multi-faceted, twenty year collaborative remediation and transformation of the former Lawrence Metal Forming Company in Chelsea, MA from an urban Brownfield site into the Homewood Suites by Hilton.
What first started as a ruinous debris pile after a major fire leveled an entire City block in May 1974 became a new 152-suite hotel located just three miles from Logan Airport and just a bridge away from Boston and the City of Cambridge. A&M provided comprehensive land survey, civil engineering design, permitting and landscape architectural services for the project which has a footprint of 16,175± square feet and a gross floor area of 78,711 square feet along with 157 parking spaces to support the hotel operations. Due to the building size, the project was considered a major commercial project, and required a Special Permit and Major Site Plan Review.
Prior to construction operations for the hotel, A&M provided support to the EPA and its remediation contractor during the clean-up operations, to delineate the future construction limits for the proposed building and utility corridors in order to further refine the clean-up operations. Special attention was also given to the design of the subgrade for the parking areas, exterior sidewalks and landscaping areas to ensure that a sufficient cap was provided between the recently remediated areas and the finished site. The hotel officially opened in March 2017.
