BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 3, 2025--
Suffolk, one of the most innovative and successful builders in the country, and Samuels & Associates, a leading Boston-based real estate development and investment firm, today announced that Lyrik, formerly known as Parcel 12, has been recognized with multiple prestigious industry awards celebrating the project’s excellence in planning, design and construction.
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As the first air-rights development in Boston in more than 40 years, Lyrik reimagined what is possible in one of the most complex environments for construction while revitalizing a long-underutilized parcel above the Massachusetts Turnpike.
The transformative mixed-use development was recently named Engineering News-Record (ENR) East’s Best Regional Project: Mixed-Use and was selected as a finalist for ENR New England’s Project of the Year. Lyrik has also received the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) Project Achievement Award in the Residential/Mixed-Use category (construction value over $50 million) and was honored by the Commercial Real Estate Development Association (NAIOP) with their Distinguished Development Award, and was recognized by the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) Boston chapter’s The Outstanding Building of the Year (TOBY) Awards for Mixed-Use Building of the Year.
The construction of Lyrik required a uniquely coordinated and technologically advanced approach. Suffolk leveraged digital modeling, real-time scheduling and project controls, and close alignment with design and trade partners to safely deliver the structure above the Massachusetts Turnpike, while ensuring uninterrupted transit operations below. The project serves as a model for high-density development that bridges transportation corridors and reconnects communities.
Built directly above the Massachusetts Turnpike and active MBTA rail lines, the project required an extraordinary level of coordination among public and private partners, from MassDOT and MBTA to engineers and dozens of trade crews working within inches of live traffic. Before construction began, Suffolk utilized a Digital Delivery process including VDC integration, field-driven mockups and coordinated drawings to eliminate design conflicts and leading to reduced rework in the field. To safely install massive steel beams that formed the platform supporting the entire development over the highway, Suffolk implemented “rolling roadblocks” that briefly shut down traffic and allowed crews minutes-long windows of time to lift and secure materials before lanes were reopened to drivers.
“Lyrik is a symbol of what can be achieved when committed partners share a vision and work together relentlessly to make that vision a reality,” said Patrick Lucey, General Manager, Northeast, at Suffolk. “As the first air-rights project in Boston in more than forty years, Lyrik was an incredibly complicated project that required construction above an active highway and transit infrastructure. The entire construction process required collaboration, innovation, precision and creativity to ensure success. We are incredibly proud of these accomplishments and we are honored Lyrik has been recognized.”
“Lyrik represents the culmination of a shared vision, redefining what’s possible in urban development and strengthening the fabric of the city we call home,” said Abe Menzin, Executive VP of Development & Principal. “This project exemplifies the power of public-private partnership, technical innovation, and the enduring vibrancy of Boston’s neighborhoods. Lyrik transforms a space that once divided two neighborhoods into a dynamic gateway that celebrates our community and brings people together.”
Connecting Boston’s Back Bay and Fenway neighborhoods, Lyrik includes approximately 655,000 square feet of office, hospitality and retail spaces. The development features a CitizenM hotel; modern office and research space anchored by CarGurus; and a collection of street-level dining and retail experiences, including a Rivian electric vehicle showroom and service hub.
Suffolk continues to deliver some of New England’s most complex and impactful development projects. Recent notable work includes Winthrop Center, which earned ENR New England’s 2024 Award of Merit: Mixed-Use and a CMAA Project Achievement Award; the South Station Tower, a transformative expansion of one of the busiest transit hubs in the Northeast completed this fall; the Northeastern University EXP research and academic facility, which advances interdisciplinary science and engineering learning; and the Boston University Center for Computing & Data Sciences, a landmark sustainable high-rise that anchors BU’s future in data-driven innovation. These projects reflect Suffolk’s continued commitment to shaping the skyline, strengthening community connections, and redefining what’s possible in complex urban construction.
About Suffolk
Suffolk is a national enterprise that builds, innovates and invests. Suffolk is an end-to-end business that provides value throughout the entire project lifecycle by leveraging its core construction management services with vertical service lines that include real estate capital investment, design, self-perform construction services, technology start-up investment (Suffolk Technologies) and innovation research/development.
Suffolk – America’s Contractor – is a national company with more than $9 billion in annual revenue, 3,000 employees, and offices in Boston (headquarters); New York City and Westchester County, New York; Miami, West Palm Beach, Tampa and Estero in Florida; Dallas; Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego; Las Vegas; Portland, Maine; New Haven, Connecticut; Herndon, Virginia; and Salt Lake City.
Suffolk manages some of the most complex, sophisticated projects in the country, serving clients in every major industry sector, including healthcare, life sciences, education, gaming, transportation/aviation, federal government and public work, mission critical, advanced technology and commercial. Suffolk is privately held and is led by Founder, Chairman and CEO John Fish. Suffolk is ranked #8 on ENR’s list of “Largest Domestic Builders” and #10 on its list of “Top CM-at-Risk Contractors.” For more information, visitww.suffolk.comand follow Suffolk onFacebook,Twitter,LinkedInandYouTube.
Lyrik stands above the Massachusetts Turnpike, showcasing one of Boston’s most significant air-rights developments in decades.
NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.
The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.
As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.
Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.
“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."
To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.
“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”
Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.
The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.
“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”
For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.
Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.
During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.
Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.
“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”
A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.
Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.
A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.
“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.
Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.
Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”
Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.
Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.
“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.
When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.
In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.
Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.
Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."
In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.
“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.
State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.
Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.
“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”
He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.
Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.
Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."
The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.
“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”
FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)
