28-38 Winter St

Where 28-38 Winter St is

Its block in Downtown Boston, drawn from Boston's own building outlines and street centerlines.

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

45 ft of exterior wall for each home the screen estimates — enough for two- and three-bedroom homes across the plan.

The typical floor has 386 ft of exterior wall, and across 13 residential floors the building carries 4,808 ft of it in total, divided among the 106 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.73: close to a square or a circle, the most efficient envelope an office can have and the least generous one for apartments: little perimeter to divide among homes. How window line and plate shape are measured.

At the model’s 750 sq ft average, the plan works out at about 8.2 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 28-38 Winter St scores 95 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 98, Scale 71, Finance 100 — each out of 100, then weighted.

Most of what it earns comes from daylight efficiency, and what holds it back most is scale, at 71 out of 100: 106 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150.

Built in 1972

Boston records this building as going up in 1972, which puts it in the late-modern stock.

As a rule, typically the hardest to convert: the deepest plates of any era, large central cores, and floor-to-floor heights tight enough that running residential drainage under a ceiling can be the thing that ends a project. That is the era’s general tendency rather than a finding about this building — the model reads an outline and a height, and can see nothing inside — but it is the first thing an architect would want to know, and it colours how much confidence the 95% daylight figure above deserves.

What the conversion would cost

$360 per square foot all-in across 105,001 sq ft of converted floor, or $37.8M in total — about $357K for each of the 106 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 4,830 sq ft of windowless core, which has to be gutted, re-plumbed and sprinklered like the rest of the building and then earns nothing. Against it the model sets a completed value of $442K a home, which for 106 homes is $46.8M.

What would have to be true

This one already clears the bar. The question is how much room it has before it stops.

At $442K a home, completed value covers the $37.8M of work with $9.0M to spare. Value per home would have to fall to $357K — 19% below the assumption — before the conversion stopped penciling, or all-in cost would have to rise from $360 to $446 per square foot. Neither is a wide margin in a market that moves, but this building does not need a grant to work.

Each of these, moved on its own, would be enough to undo that for 28-38 Winter St:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 28-38 Winter St re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown Boston

28-38 Winter St ranks 14th of the 96 buildings screened here, against a median score of 89.

Its floor plate is better lit than 64% of them, and shallower than 66% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 62nd largest by estimated homes. The full survey of all 96 buildings ranks and maps every one of them, and the list by address links each to its own page.

Within the SKY-LOW-DT zone

7th of 25 zoned SKY-LOW-DT — the comparison that shares its rules, rents and streets.

25 of the screened buildings are zoned SKY-LOW-DT. 28-38 Winter St ranks 7th of them against a median score of 91. 24 score 70 or more, their median deepest interior point is 35 ft from a facade against this building’s 41 ft, and together they would hold an estimated 2,629 homes. The group’s top scorer is 36-44 Broad St, at 100.

Its nearest match in size: 43-45 Devonshire St

The screened building closest to 28-38 Winter St in converted floor area is 43-45 Devonshire St: 109,677 sq ft over 13 stories, against 105,001 sq ft over 14 here.

The two land within a few points of each other — 95 here, 96 there — so at this size the screen reads them as much the same prospect. On the money they sit in the same place: each pencils without a subsidy. The two stand about 1,500 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 28-38 Winter St $6.4M, on the assumption it qualifies. Whether it does, no published dataset can say.

That figure assumes the building meets the Act’s vacant-and-abandoned test, which turns on code-enforcement and receivership records no city publishes.

It does not sit in a 2018 designated Opportunity Zone, so it would not draw that Section 201 priority.

Other buildings screened near 28-38 Winter St

The 4 closest the screen also covers, from 250 ft away. They are the colored outlines on the plan at the top of this page.

• 60-70 Temple Pl
  7 stories · 95% daylit · 50 estimated homes · scores 89/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 250 ft away
• 417-435 Washington St
  10 stories · 100% daylit · 152 estimated homes · scores 100/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 260 ft away
• 17-33 Winter St
  7 stories · 83% daylit · 82 estimated homes · scores 78/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 280 ft away
• 25-31 West St
  5 stories · 100% daylit · 31 estimated homes · scores 88/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 380 ft away