Skip to main content
Loading weather...

Charlestown 99 restaurant to be replaced by ‘soulless’ apartment buildings and Bostonians are fuming

Tuesday, April 21, 2026•
5 min read
MDN Staff
•
6 shares
Charlestown 99 restaurant to be replaced by ‘soulless’ apartment buildings and Bostonians are fuming

Listen to Article

0:002:49
Speed:
CHARLESTOWN — The 99 Restaurant in Charlestown is getting torn down for a six-story apartment building. 240 units. 62 parking spaces. Another piece of Boston, gone.
The Boston Planning Department board approved the project on April 16 — and no public testimony was allowed at the meeting. As first reported by Universal Hub, the $85 million project by New England Development will replace the 99 and some vacant land at Rutherford Avenue and Austin Street, possibly completed by 2028.
Rendering of the proposed six-story apartment building at 201 Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown
Rendering of the proposed 240-unit building at 201 Rutherford Avenue. Elkus Manfredi Architects.
The 99 has been in Charlestown for decades. It's the kind of place that doesn't exist in the new Boston — a chain restaurant with cheap steak tips where old guys sit at the bar on a Tuesday afternoon. It's not trendy. It's not a concept. It's a neighborhood spot that people actually go to. And now it's being replaced by the same apartment building you've seen go up in every neighborhood from the Seaport to Allston.
62 parking spaces for 240 apartments. That's one spot for roughly every four units. In Charlestown. The building isn't for the people who live here — it's for the people moving in.

Boston isn't having it

The reaction has been swift and exactly what you'd expect from a city watching itself get hollowed out one block at a time.

MASSDAILYNEWS

STAY UPDATED

Get Mass Daily News delivered to your inbox

That last one is a reference to the infamous November 1995 mob shooting that left four men dead inside the restaurant — one of the last major spasms of organized crime violence in Boston.
The Charlestown Preservation Society pushed back on the project too, demanding a complete master plan for the entire Bunker Hill Mall site before any single building gets approved. They wanted guaranteed replacement restaurant space "of comparable size and rent structure to the Ninety Nine."
The BPDA approved it anyway.

This is just the beginning

New England Development has owned the Bunker Hill Mall since 1978. This building is Phase 1 of a plan to eventually redevelop the entire six-acre property — four buildings total, replacing the mall piece by piece as tenants move out and "economic conditions allow."
The Whole Foods on site has a long-term lease, and the developer insists they have "no intention of removing the grocery store." For now.
The 99 doesn't have that protection. After decades in the neighborhood, the restaurant is making way for another apartment building that looks like every other apartment building going up in every corner of this city.
Boston needs housing. Nobody's arguing that. But at some point you have to ask what's left of a city when every place people actually care about gets replaced by something nobody does.

Have a tip? Email us at [email protected]

Loading Comments