The Newman School’s plan to purchase a pair of contiguous Newbury Street buildings for use as student and staff housing was again before the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay Licensing and Building Use Committee at its monthly meeting held virtually on Monday, Sept. 9.
Attorney Mike Ross detailed a proposal from The Newman School – a private boarding and day school for Grades 7-12 located at 245-247 Marlborough St. – to purchase and repurpose a pair of brownstones at 298-300 Newbury St., which were formerly home to the Jesuit Collaborative and had been occupied by Jesuit priests since the 1940s. The two buildings are currently zoned as a “home for priests,” he said, so the applicant is seeking a dorm license for them from the Boston Licensing Board.
Representatives for The Newman School detailed nascent plans for this proposal during the LBU Committee’s Feb. 5 virtual monthly meeting.
Around 40 students are expected to live in the two buildings during the roughly 32-week school year, spanning the last week of August until the first week of June (except for two-week vacations in December and March, respectively), as well as during the six-week summer school, which runs from the last week of June until the first week of June. Faculty are expected to live in the buildings year-round.
In another matter, Treehouse Brewing, which has been operating a beer garden in the Prudential Mall courtyard since the summer using single-day licenses, returned to the LBU Committee with plans to make this operation more permanent.
Representatives for Treehouse – a Charlton, Mass.-based manufacturer of craft beer and other beverages – had previously appeared at the LBU Committee’s virtual June 3 meeting when they were applying to the city for a series of 30 one-day ‘pouring’ permits for the proposed beer garden. (The committee didn’t oppose this proposal at that time.)
Since opening last summer, Treehouse’s temporary operation at the Pru has been deemed a great success, without any reports of guests leaving the designated area with alcoholic beverages, said company representatives on hand for the latest LBU Committee meeting.
In a third matter, representatives for Berklee College of Music were back before the committee to discuss the latest plans for a proposed first-level café to open along with a basement dance studio at 699 Boylston St. – the former home of Tom Brady’s TB12 Performance & Recovery Center.
Representatives for Berklee had previously come before the LBU Committee at its June 3 virtual monthly meeting to pitch the plan. The ’grab-and-go’ café would be open to Berklee students, as well as to the public, selling smoothies and yogurt, among other commissary food item, they said, while the basement dance studios themselves would only be accessible using a Berklee key card.
The café, which has now identified an operator, was originally set to open Oct. 1, said Erik Ciniello, Berklee’s director of operations, but that date has been “pushed back” two weeks due to licensing issues “and a couple of other hiccups.” Its hours of operation would be 7:30 to 8 p.m., seven days a week, he said.
Meanwhile, Conrad Armstrong, LBU Committee chair, told the applicants he would get to them with NABB’s determinations (i.e. to oppose or not oppose) on their respective applications “within a week or two.”