The Revere Zoning Board of Appeals has cleared the way for a 16-story, 170-foot apartment tower with 334 units on the site of the long-running Wonderland Ballroom, a vote that reshapes one of the city's most recognizable beachfront parcels. The board approved the project's variances by a 4-1 vote at its September 30, 2026, meeting, 16 days before October 16, paving the way for a building that will tower over the stretch of Revere Beach Boulevard where generations of locals once danced the night away.
According to the Revere Journal, the approval covers a 16-story, 170-foot tall building that will contain 334 apartment units. The project also folds in a new function facility on a lower floor designed to serve as a replacement for the ballroom itself, an attempt to preserve at least a piece of the site's decades-old identity even as the building around it transforms entirely. As Boston Business Journal reported, the project is considered one of the largest residential developments along the beach in the past decade and will replace the oceanside events center that has occupied the site.
What's Changing From the Original Proposal
The approved plan is actually smaller than what was originally pitched. The Revere Journal's account of the ZBA process notes that the earlier application sought 17 stories, a height of 182 feet, and 358 apartment units — figures that drew pushback before the board ultimately granted variances for the scaled-down 16-story, 334-unit version. Of those units, 23 apartments, equaling seven percent of the total, will be offered as affordable housing.
Parking drew its own share of scrutiny. The development will include 90 parking spaces within the property itself, while roughly 1,400 adjacent MBTA parking-lot spaces are expected to serve ballroom-style events at the site, per the Revere Journal's reporting. As a condition of the approval, tenants of the new building will not be eligible for the city's on-street parking program.
A Site With a Long, Layered History
The Wonderland site carries more history than its current strip-mall-adjacent location might suggest. The first Wonderland Ballroom opened in 1906 as part of the 25-acre Wonderland amusement park in Revere, according to the Boston Globe. The structure that most Revere residents would recognize today opened in the early 1960s and became the preeminent ballroom in the area, featuring gilded walls, gold-draped lights, and three separate dance floors, the Globe reported at the time the property first went up for sale.
That 2013 sale listing wasn't the first time big plans circled the property without materializing. A tentative plan floated for the site once called for a 196-room hotel in a 12- or 13-story building, contingent on a casino landing at nearby Suffolk Downs — plans that were abandoned once the casino deal fell through, the Revere Journal reported in 2015. The site has long been the subject of development proposals.
Part of a Broader Building Boom
The Wonderland tower lands amid a sustained wave of multifamily construction in Revere. The city says nearly 40 new multifamily projects, totaling more than 3,000 units, were permitted between 2014 and 2021, per the City of Revere. Other recent approvals along the waterfront include the seven-story Beach Landing development at 37 Revere Beach Boulevard, which the Revere Journal reported would bring 18 luxury, transit-oriented apartments alongside a 1,400-square-foot waterfront restaurant, and the 291-unit Gibson Point project, a multifamily property under construction on the North Shore waterfront that will include ground-level retail space and an on-site restaurant, according to Multifamily Dive.
The pace of construction comes as the city grapples with housing affordability. Revere reports that nearly half of all households in the city, 48 percent, are considered cost-burdened by housing expenses, and that for every seven households that qualify as low-income, there is less than one deed-restricted affordable housing unit available. One approach to housing affordability is requiring certain new residential developments to include affordable units.
