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What was once the center of operations for Boston’s notorious “Taxi King” has been greenlighted to become Fenway’s latest multifamily development.
The Boston Planning & Development Agency approved a proposal by CIM Group and Cabot, Cabot & Forbes to turn the former Boston Cab headquarters at Kilmarnock and Queensbury streets into a 420K SF, 443-unit residential development. The project will be split between two eight-story buildings and include 37 affordable units, ground-floor retail and 250 parking spaces.
The development partnership bought the property in 2017 for $51M from Boston Cab owner Edward Tutunjian after he was convicted in federal court in late 2016 of tax evasion, failing to pay overtime to employees and hiring undocumented workers.
“It was the 24/7 operation for several hundred taxis. Its passing is not necessarily mourned by the neighborhood,” Cabot, Cabot & Forbes CEO Jay Doherty said to the BPDA board, according to the Boston Herald. “This was a very difficult acquisition made probably a little bit more difficult by the fact that its seller was a convicted federal felon in jail and also financially fragile because of decline in value of taxi cab medallions.”
Tutunjian’s federal charges came shortly after a 2013 investigation by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, which reported he exploited Boston Cab’s immigrant workforce with bribes and garnished wages for so-called fare discrepancies. The IRS raided the Boston Cab property shortly after the series ran.
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