60-70 Temple Pl

Where 60-70 Temple Pl is

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

The plan: window line, shape and floor rhythm

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

The typical floor has 366 ft of exterior wall, and across 6 residential floors the building carries 2,193 ft of it in total, divided among the 50 homes this screen estimates.

Its plate is compact at 0.78: 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 8.3 homes per floor, repeated on every residential floor, since this building's outline does not change as it rises.

Why 60-70 Temple Pl scores 89 out of 100

Daylight efficiency 100, Interior depth 95, Scale 33, 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 33 out of 100: 50 estimated homes, scored from 0 up to 150.

Built in 1920

Boston records this building as going up in 1920, which puts it in the interwar stock.

As a rule, steel or concrete frames with punched windows and plates still narrow enough for daylight to reach the middle, often with high ceilings. Among the most convertible stock there is, and the reason so many early conversions were of buildings this age. 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 50,005 sq ft of converted floor, or $18.0M in total — about $360K for each of the 50 homes.

That cost is charged across every converted square foot, including the 2,473 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 50 homes is $22.1M.

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 $18.0M of work with $4.1M to spare. Value per home would have to fall to $360K — 18% below the assumption — before the conversion stopped penciling, or all-in cost would have to rise from $360 to $441 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 60-70 Temple Pl:

All four are sliders in the survey, where 60-70 Temple Pl re-scores against your own numbers.

How it compares in Downtown Boston

60-70 Temple Pl ranks 47th of the 96 buildings screened here, against a median score of 89.

Its floor plate is better lit than 63% of them, and shallower than 65% of them at its deepest interior point. On size it is the 86th 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

20th 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. 60-70 Temple Pl ranks 20th 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 42 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: 40-62 Franklin St

The screened building closest to 60-70 Temple Pl in converted floor area is 40-62 Franklin St: 51,840 sq ft over 5 stories, against 50,005 sq ft over 7 here.

60-70 Temple Pl scores 89 to its 76, and with the size held roughly equal most of that lead comes from interior depth: 95 out of 100 here, 61 there (deepest interior point 55 ft from a facade, scored from 80 ft down to 40 ft). On the money they sit in the same place: each pencils without a subsidy. The two stand about 800 ft apart.

Would it qualify for a RESIDE Act grant?

The model awards 60-70 Temple Pl $3.0M, 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 60-70 Temple Pl

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.

• 28-38 Winter St
  14 stories · 95% daylit · 106 estimated homes · scores 95/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 250 ft away
• 25-31 West St
  5 stories · 100% daylit · 31 estimated homes · scores 88/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 310 ft away
• 21-53 Summer St
  11 stories · 47% daylit · 401 estimated homes · scores 27/100 (Unlikely)
  about 320 ft away
• 417-435 Washington St
  10 stories · 100% daylit · 152 estimated homes · scores 100/100 (Strong candidate)
  about 320 ft away