Urban Developer Killed in Boston Plane Crash : Accident: Michael Spear was president of Rouse Co., which developed Boston’s Faneuil Hall and N.Y.’s South Street Seaport.

BOSTON — A twin-engine private plane crashed today in a driveway between two houses in a crowded residential neighborhood, killing the president of a major urban development firm, his wife and daughter, officials said.

The crash, which occurred in fog and light rain, also set the two houses on fire, but no one on the ground was injured.

Killed was Michael Spear, the president of Rouse Co., a downtown developer whose projects included the Harbor Place on the Baltimore waterfront, the Faneuil Hall shopping area in Boston, the South Street Seaport in New York and the revitalization of Underground Atlanta.

Also killed were his wife, Judith, 47, and their daughter Jodi, 19.

Phil Orlandella, spokesman for the agency that runs Logan International Airport, identified Spear, 49, as the pilot.

The twin-engine turbo-prop Piper Cheyenne was bound for Logan International Airport from the Cape Cod town of Chatham, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Spear aborted his first approach to Logan about 6:24 a.m. because he could not slow the plane, the FAA said. Controllers told him to climb while circling west over Boston but Spear responded that his left engine was on fire.

The plane dropped off radar at 6:33 a.m., crashed and burst into flames in the driveway between the two single-family homes in the city’s Mattapan section, setting both houses on fire, authorities said.

Neighbors said the occupants of one house were away on vacation and that five people in the other house fled to safety. Neighbors said a man who lived in the house helped two women and two children escape out a window and suffered minor injuries in the process.

Spear was president of Rouse Co., the largest publicly held real estate development company in the nation, since 1986.