Fort Point could soon be getting a little more height.
Developer Berkeley Investments is talking with neighborhood groups about a 20-plus story residential tower at 7 Channel Center that would be one of the tallest structures in the historic red-brick neighborhood.
Nothing has been filed with the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and Berkeley said it is still ironing out details. But it is planning a roughly 200-unit apartment building with street-level retail, live/work housing for artists and “innovation” units, along with market-rate apartments on the upper floors.
“We think there is tremendous potential in this neighborhood,” said Berkeley President Young Park. “It’s unfolding much faster than we thought.”
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Indeed, the site is a stone’s throw from where GE plans to build its global headquarters, and next door to State Street Financial Corp.’s complex at One Channel Center — where thousands of people work.
Berkeley has had a hand in Fort Point since 2004, when it bought and renovated 13 brick-and-beam warehouses in the historic neighborhood across the channel from downtown. It has sold some of those buildings and bought others since. In 2013, it paid $9 million for 7 and 9 Channel Center, part of a historic row of warehouses. It’s rehabbing 9 Channel into creative office space, and plans to tear down 7 Channel — a smaller, dilapidated building — to build its residential tower.
Details on height and number of units of the new complex are still being worked out ahead of a filing with the BRA, likely later this spring. But the project would be the biggest shot of new housing into the area since 20-story luxury apartment building 315 on A opened three years ago.
To make the project economically feasible, a Berkeley spokesman said, it needs to be taller than the 75 feet currently allowed in the area under the so-called 100-acre zoning plan. That means the decade-old plan would need to be amended, though the project would go a long way toward helping the plan reach its goal that one-third of new development in the area be residential.
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Meanwhile Park said his firm is sensitive to the neighborhood’s historic architecture and wants to build something that — while taller than the typical five-to-seven story brick buildings — still fits in.
“We’re of the neighborhood,” he said. “We’re not trying to land a spaceship in this community.”
Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.