Modular apartment construction is gaining a foothold in Boston, as the Boston Globe reports:
At one end of a football-field-size plant 40 miles north of the Maine border, workers lay out boards and cover them with plywood to make a floor. At the other end, an 800-square-foot apartment — bathroom fixtures and all — is swaddled in protective wrapping and rolled out to the parking lot.
In between, an intricate ballet of carpenters and electricians, plumbers and painters work above, below, and inside each apartment amid the thud of nail guns and the smell of fresh paint. Step by step, the apartments take shape until they’re basically livable, minus utilities. Then they are sent on their way, many of them bound for Boston, where they’re stacked like shipping containers to create apartment buildings.
The factory — operated by RCM Group — makes about 600 apartments and hotel rooms a year, many of which have been sent recently to Allston, Somerville, and Charlestown, with more coming to Quincy, Newton, and Beverly.
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