After three decades lying vacant, a 14-acre former industrial site along the harbor in East Boston is not only home to a vibrant mixed-use community, it’s setting new standards for resilient and sustainable development. Completed in March 2021, Clippership Wharf features a mix of four residential buildings with 478 residential units on the upper floors and a mix of residential, retail, public and recreational spaces on the main level. What makes the development unique is its response to future sea-level rise, setting residential entrances at 14 ft above mean high tide, well above FEMA guidelines. The project also broke norms along the harbor by creating an intertidal area that allows the tides to move in and out of the site naturally, rather than holding them back with seawalls. Nick Iselin, general manager for Boston development at LendLease, says the strategy helped solve two main issues: concerns about future sea-level rise and the expense of excavating portions of the site, which would require removal and proper disposal of contaminated soils. “The incentives were aligned,” he says. “The resilient solution suggested we raise the site as high as we could. The remediation goal of having less exposure to contaminated soils also suggested that we raise the site. Those two aims were not conflicting and helped push us to the right solution.”
Clippership Wharf, which won ENR New England’s Project of the Year, is not only built to be resilient against future sea level rise, the project on East Boston’s waterfront also transformed an underutilized area. Photos courtesy of Lendlease