BPDA Board Approves Wentworth 972-Bed Dorm and Tropical Foods Worker Buyout

BOSTON -- February 12, 2026, BPDA board clears Wentworth's 972-bed dorm and a Tropical Foods worker buyout at annual meeting. The Boston Planning and Development Agency Board of Directors, meeting February 12 in its annual joint EDIC and BRA session, unanimously reelected Priscilla Rojas as chair and Raheem Shepard as vice chair before working through more than 20 substantive votes. The board approved the first amendment to Wentworth Institute of Technology's 2024-2034 Institutional Master Plan and a preliminary adequacy determination for the Pike Residence Hall, a 972-bed, approximately 202-foot-tall dormitory replacing a 181-space surface parking lot, which BPDA Director Arthur Jemison called the first project to go through the agency's modernized Article 80D review in roughly six months. The board also approved a restructured ground lease for the Tropical Foods Supermarket at Parcel 10 in Roxbury that would transfer the property into an employee stock ownership trust financed by APIS and Heritage Capital Partners, settling pending litigation that had clouded the grocery anchor's future. On 154 Terrace Street in Mission Hill, a proposal to convert 66 homeownership condominiums to 65 rentals under new developer Joe Federico, the vote was 4-1, the only divided vote of the session, with board member Dr. Ted Landsmark citing unresolved traffic and parking concerns on the narrow street.