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Bornstein & Pearl Food Production Center

Location: 196 Quincy Street, Dorchester, MA 02125

Completion Date: 2014

Client: Dorchester Bay EDC

Size: 36,000 SF

RODE Architects won this project in an invited competition to team with the Dorchester Bay EDC on the adaptive reuse of the former Pearl Meats factory in Dorchester. The facility is the commercial centerpiece of a $100 million investment in the Quincy St corridor; a coordinated, comprehensive development providing affordable housing, commercial development, job creation, job training and youth arts programming for an underserved inner-city neighborhood. The center contains a series of food-production tenant spaces that share common amenities and support spaces. A food incubator master tenant - Commonwealth Kitchen - provides support and training programs for entrepreneurs, and graduates of this program now populate the remaining tenant spaces.

 

RODE was challenged to make the former meat-processing plant - a 36,000 SF single-story haphazard cluster of windowless masonry volumes - suitable for the many occupants the new program would bring, with a design that would match the aspirational mission and practical budget of its non-profit organization. The team carved a circulation path through the core of the building that gave direct access to every tenant space, punctuating the corridor with expansive skylights for orientation and natural lighting.

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