Charter School Building New 83,000SF Campus in Newmarket Neighborhood

May 23, 2023 – By Tom Palmer

BOSTON – Boston Realty Advisors, the largest independent real estate brokerage in Massachusetts, represented longtime client Roxbury Prep Charter School in the purchase of property in the Newmarket neighborhood of Roxbury for construction of a new 83,000-square-foot high-school building.

The purchase price for the land, at 69-71 Proctor St., was $5.4 million. The four-story building will serve 800 students who are currently educated in two facilities several miles apart elsewhere in Boston.

“Roxbury Prep is my client of 12 years,” said Chris McMahon, Managing Director of Boston Realty Advisors. “We put it under agreement in May of ’21 and went through the whole city permitting and approval process to get a new state-of-the-art building there.”

Boston Realty Advisors also recently represented RoxPrep on the move to 2179 Washington St., which had been occupied by City on a Hill.

The new building is designed by Cambridge-based SMMA architects, and Suffolk Construction is the general contractor. DBI Projects, headquartered in NYC with a local Boston office, will serve as owner’s project manager.

Roxbury Prep – managed by Uncommon Schools – operates four charter schools in Boston, serving grades 5 through 12, all of which are free of tuition and open to all. Its award-winning instructional model is designed to support students’ academic and personal growth, infuse joy into every day, and prepare students to succeed in college and beyond.

Roxbury Prep has been an active partner in Boston since 1999 and currently operates middle schools at 206 Magnolia St., 22 Regina Rd. and 120 Fisher Ave., as well as two high-school locations, at 1286 Hyde Park Ave. and 2179 Washington St.

Uncommon Schools, headquartered in New York City, operates 53 schools in total, in the cities of Rochester, NY; Newark, NJ; Camden, NJ; Brooklyn, NY, and Boston, MA. Uncommon comprises a team of 2,600 education professionals, 60 percent of whom are people of color.

Over the last 18 months, Roxbury Prep successfully completed approval processes with the Boston Planning and Development Agency and Zoning Board of Appeals  and has received its building permit and approvals. The project, with an estimated construction cost of $55 million, is under way. Other team members include QPD LLC, Brown Rudnick LLP, Stantec Nitsch Engineering, and GZA GeoEnvironmental.

A number of new schools are being built in Boston, including Boston Arts in Fenway and Josiah Quincy in Chinatown and the South End.