Community Meeting Criticizes Proposed Allston-Brighton Projects

Despite a heavy rain and strong winds, a large number of concerned residents turned up on Thursday, January 24, 2019, to fill every seat at the Brighton Allston Community Coalition [BACC]’s second public meeting which was held at the Congregational Church in Brighton Center.

Two BACC steering committee members opened the meeting by explaining why the BACC founders felt it was necessary to form this new community group last year; and what BACC, whose membership now includes more than 450 neighborhood residents, has done since its formation in 2018.

Seeking more community control over the type and size of construction projects affecting the lives of Allston-Brighton residents, the BACC wrote in an October 24, 2018 letter to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Boston Planning and Development Agency [BPDA] Director Brian Golden that it has “significant reservations concerning the Mayor’s support of, and the BPDA’s resulting approval of, housing developments that do not reflect the interests and desires of Allston-Brighton residents” and “this has occurred despite the BPDA’s frequently emphasized assertion that its planning processes seek to be responsive to community concerns.”

According to the BACC’s Oct. 24, 2018 letter:

“Sadly, our members define the BPDA’s actions in approving housing development proposals, and the Mayor’s support of such proposals, as far more responsive to developers rather than Allston-Brighton residents. A striking example of this tendency was the approval of a largely rental development on the former site of St. Gabriel’s Church, despite widespread community opposition…We stress that Allston-Brighton is a community at risk…

“Absentee investors are purchasing owner-occupied homes almost as soon as they come on the market, and prices of condominiums and single and two-and-three-family homes have been driven up so much by eager investors that individuals, couples and families are barred simply by price from purchasing property in Allston or Brighton. Moreover, the housing built since the election of Mayor Walsh is simply not affordable for the overwhelming majority of Allston-Brighton residents. Given escalating rents and home prices, working and middle-class residents of our community increasingly are displaced from our neighborhood, despite their desire to stay…

“Sadly, the BPDA consistently has neglected widely expressed community concerns related to inadequate urban planning…Before defining our major concerns, we stress that we are not a NIMBY group. We recognize the need to build more housing in our community and in the city as a whole...

“…Hundreds and hundreds of new rental units already have been built in Allston-Brighton under a Walsh Administration BPDA. But these rental units…have merely created building after building of expensive (and not necessarily luxury) rentals…To summarize, there is a significant mismatch between the residential housing being approved by the Walsh administration and the compelling need for more affordable and owner-occupied housing in Allston-Brighton…

“The creation of more affordable units is an acute concern in Allston-Brighton, given that Brighton’s median income is $56,729 and Allston’s is $42,722. Given the high cost of rental and home ownership, increasing numbers of working and middle class people have been forced to leave our neighborhood…Investor/absentee landlords…purchase two-and-three-family homes in our community…and…charge rapacious rents to undergraduate students, thus significantly reducing the supply of affordable housing….

“The City of Boston should mandate that all new residential housing developments in Allston-Brighton make 20 percent of their on-site units affordable…Current definitions of affordability exclude many Allston-Brighton and Boston residents from renting or purchasing new affordable units in our neighborhood...

“…Our streets increasingly are clogged with traffic, slowing commuting times and increasing air pollution. Moreover, given the lack of improvements in public transportation, we have witnessed an increasing reliance on Uber and Lyft, producing even more traffic congestion….The current traffic congestion in the Seaport District serves as a reminder of the severe negative consequences of large-scale development occurring prior to adequate public transportation being built...

“…We need to create an urban planning process that reflects the needs and interests of Allston-Brighton residents….”

According to one member of the BACC steering committee the Walsh administration is apparently also avoiding some of the legal standards (related to height limitations, evidence of actual community benefits, etc.) in the neighborhood zoning code that have, historically, been required before the City of Boston agreed to grant a real estate developer a zoning variance for a proposed construction project in Allston-Brighton, by the technique of a Planned Development Area -- a planning tool that only needs to be approved by the BPDA board of directors and then generally rubber-stamped by the Zoning Commission.

In response to some neighborhood residents’ questions regarding how much actual influence members of a proposed construction project’s Impact Advisory Group [IAG] can have in insuring that community residents' concerns are addressed before the BPDA approves a project, it was also pointed out by some BACC founders that, when the BPDA creates an IAG, neighborhood residents should be involved, in a more democratic way, in the Mayor and BPDA’s process of determining who the community’s representatives will be on a project’s IAG.

The status of major proposed construction projects in Allston-Brighton like the proposed Whole Foods Reconstruction/Apartment Complex at 15-35 Washington St., the proposed Stop & Shop/Allston Yards Apartment/Office Complex at 60 Everett Street, the proposed `Nexus at the Innovation Corridor' project at 250-280 & 305 Western Ave., the proposed 139-149 Washington St. project, the proposed Allston Square project at the intersection of Harvard Ave. and Cambridge St. and the proposed Presentation Parish area project was also discussed at this meeting.

Some neighborhood residents at the meeting were especially critical of the proposed plan to construct over 1,000 residential units, 300,000 square feet of office, a new 65,000 square foot, flagship Stop & Shop, and over 50,000 square feet of street retail at 60 Everett St. This huge project is being planned by the Belgium-based Ahold Delhaize’s Stop & Shop subsidiary, in partnership with Boston University Trustee Stephen Karp’s New England Development Group, the Maryland-based Bozzutto Group and Southside Investment Partners. And other neighborhood residents criticized the proposed plan of Kimco Realty Corporation to construct a 270-unit luxury apartment building on top of a new Amazon-owned Whole Foods Store at 15-35 Washington St, in a Brighton neighborhood that was designated in the late 1960s and early 1970s to be an area in which needed housing for low-income seniors would be built.

A member of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council [MSAC], which works to make health care costs more affordable for people over the age of 65 and to preserve and create more housing that’s affordable to low-income seniors, also suggested that BACC advocate specifically for more “low-income” and more “moderate income” housing in Allston-Brighton, instead of just using the vague term “affordable housing"; since what the City of Boston defines as “affordable housing” is mostly unaffordable to low-income seniors and most working families who currently live in Allston-Brighton.