Labs and apartments could be coming to the southern edge of downtown Boston

A joint venture of two New York-based developers, Peebles Corp. and Genesis Cos., has won the rights to build a tower on state-owned land along Kneeland Street on the edge of Chinatown, overlooking the entrance to the O’Neill Tunnel, the Globe’s Jon Chesto reports.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation board voted on Wednesday to approve the Peebles-Genesis bid, following a year-long contest that initially drew six bidders interested in the 1.4-acre site, known as “Parcel 25.” This marked the first time that MassDOT used the so-called “Massport Model,” in which the diversity of bidders counted toward 25 percent of scoring, to pick a developer for a surplus site. In this case, both Peebles and Genesis are Black-owned firms.

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