Third time’s the charm? Developer Ori Feibush wants 275 apartments at 1601 Washington Ave.

The former site of Hoa Binh Plaza at 16th and Washington is slated for 275 rental apartments, 10 for-sale townhouses, almost 40,000 square feet of commercial space, and almost 200 shared underground parking spaces.

The apartment portion of the project will include 10% of the units earmarked for tenants making 50% of area median income (AMI), or almost $60,000 for a family of four.

This is developer Ori Feibush’s third proposal for the site in the last 15 months. As a result of pushback from near neighbors and the South of South Neighborhood Association (SOSNA), the developer has decided to not attempt the 400-unit maximalist version of the project he considered last year.

“No developer ever wants to build less, so [we are building fewer units] purely as a function of trying to balance a density that’s needed for a viable project with concerns from some of our neighbors,” Feibush said.

The apartment building at 1601 Washington Ave. would include 29,000 square feet of retail space on Washington Avenue, which will go to what Feibush calls “a family-oriented gym.”

There will also be 9,000 square feet of commercial space on 16th Street, which he believes will be carved up among a variety of tenants. The project will also include a courtyard accessible from Carpenter Street, while Feibush will widen the sidewalk by Washington Avenue.

The units in the apartment building will range from studios to two-bedrooms, which Feibush describes as larger than his company’s usual rentals. Atrium Design Group is the architect for the project.

The site is zoned for industrial development, so Feibush will need to make a case for a residential project before the Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA).

SOSNA’s zoning committee has not yet taken a vote on the project, although the group has held community meetings in advance of Tuesday’s Civic Design Review meeting, where city-appointed architects and planners will give advisory feedback on the project. (While Feibush and several of his employees sit on SOSNA’s board, they do not serve on the zoning committee, which will vote on the proposal.)

“This is his best proposal yet because he hired a really good architect this time,” said Murray Spencer, chair of SOSNA’s zoning committee. But he cautioned that it is not yet clear how the neighborhood group will vote in advance of the ZBA hearing on Aug. 20.

“There are a lot of people in favor of it, but I think there may be an equal number that are not in favor of it,” said Spencer.

Feibush says the design of his building responds to the different scale of buildings around the site, with a more monumental scale facing Washington Avenue and 16th Street — where there are a tangle of vacant land and light industrial buildings to the east — and smaller scope of design on Carpenter Street.

One of the biggest areas of contention is from the neighbors who face west on Chadwick Street, who will have to deal with construction right behind their houses. The seven-story height of the building is a particular concern.

“The biggest issue, especially with the near neighbors, is the density and the height,” Spencer said. “Because those residents on Chadwick Street after the building is built will always be in shadow.”

Feibush is planning the 10 single-family homes between a majority of the Chadwick Street neighbors and the main apartment building in an attempt to appease these community concerns.

“I don’t have a lot of appetite to pursue the development of single-family homes, but we [will] do some here as a buffer,” Feibush said. “That would be purely driven by a desire to create some relief for that street, not by any desire to have a mix of homes and apartments.”

The west side of Washington Avenue has seen a burst of residential construction over the last 15 years, replacing warehouses and other forms of light industry that once dominated the roadway.

That has led to controversy with some neighborhood groups that want to retain the older businesses and the associated jobs. Fears about parking access and large multifamily developments have stoked pushback as well.

The south side of the avenue remains largely devoid of redevelopment. But the north side is booming.

Feibush himself has already developed two large residential projects at 2101 and 2201 Washington Ave. The large, long vacant parcels on the north side of the intersection of Broad Street and Washington have been turned into hundreds of apartments and a profusion of commercial space by Alterra Property Group and the Post Bros.

1601 Washington would be the next parcel to be used for residential development.

For almost 30 years, it was the home of one of the earliest Vietnamese-owned shopping plazas on the roadway. Hoa Binh Plaza closed after it was purchased in 2019 by Streamline, a once ascendant developer in the area.

Since Streamline’s business collapsed, Feibush has been trying to move forward with his own multifamily development at the property.

“This is a site that should be higher-density apartments to provide a product that’s lacking in the neighborhood,” Feibush said, “and will forever be lacking because most of the land has been developed. There’s very few vacant lots available. The few opportunities that might exist are on the avenue.”