Development firm HYM Investment Group broke ground Tuesday on the second apartment building in its sprawling redevelopment of Suffolk Downs, the former horseracing track on the Boston-Revere border.
The building, named Portico, will bring 473 apartments and 33,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space to Revere’s Beachmont Square. Construction began this week, more than a year after the first building at the site, a 475-unit apartment complex called Amaya, opened in summer 2024.
The groundbreaking represents welcome momentum on a project that will — with 10,000 planned units in all — eventually be the largest residential development in the region’s history. Progress on housing development there was temporarily stalled last year by the economic headwinds that have slowed development across Greater Boston and in many other US cities.
“Our focus at Suffolk Downs has always been to deliver thousands of new homes and create a truly mixed-use neighborhood and destination to meet the moment for Greater Boston,” said Tom O’Brien, HYM managing director. “Breaking ground on Portico represents that vision in action.”
HYM first received approvals for the redevelopment in both Revere and Boston four years ago, after purchasing the site in 2017 with plans to construct a whole new neighborhood between Orient Heights in East Boston and the area the developer is calling Beachmont Square, near the Beachmont Blue Line stop, in Revere.
The latest residential building, near the Beachmont station, will include a mix of studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments, as well as a 15th-floor sky deck, a fitness center, a coffee bar, and private work pods.
After completing Amaya in 2024, HYM initially struggled to hash out a financing deal for Portico. At the time, O’Brien attributed the delay to broad economic shifts over the last few years that have dramatically increased the cost of development, including rising interest rates and construction costs, as well as private market investors who typically finance housing projects seeking higher returns.
Those same dynamics have ground housing development to a relative crawl in Boston and the surrounding region over the last two years, with very few large residential projects breaking ground. In the city of Boston, 2023 and 2024 were the two slowest years for new housing permits since 2011.
Both Amaya and Portico are on the part of Suffolk Downs that sits in Revere. While Boston will require that 13 percent of apartments built in its portion of the project be set aside at affordable rents for lower- and middle-income tenants, there are no such requirements in Revere. Those requirements, developers say, add considerable expense, though they are also a major factor in producing affordable housing in communities across Greater Boston.
Portico, which is being financed in part through a $226 million construction loan from Related Fund Management, also received a $5 million state grant intended to help kickstart housing developments in Gateway Cities. The City of Revere also granted the building a $15 million tax break earlier this year, in exchange for long-term agreements from HYM on the project.
“The Suffolk Downs redevelopment is a transformative project for Revere and Greater Boston, and the Healey-Driscoll Administration was proud to award $5 million to help make this project possible,” Ed Augustus, the state housing secretary, said in a statement. “Portico and the Suffolk Downs redevelopment will help us get to the 222,000 homes Massachusetts needs to keep up with housing demand, give buyers and renters more choices, and bring down costs.”
HYM aims to complete Portico in February 2028.
Andrew Brinker can be reached at andrew.brinker@globe.com. Follow him @andrewnbrinker.