Whole Foods Reconstruction Means Neighborhood Gentrification

In a 1971 report, titled “Washington Street-Corey Road Neighborhood Development Program,” the City of Boston’s Boston Redevelopment Authority [BRA] explained why the Brighton/Brookline neighborhood, in which a suburban New York-based real estate deal-making firm wants to now construct an 85 to 80 feet high apartment complex of 229 primarily market-rate residential units (that would also include a reconstructed Amazon-Whole Foods monopoly-priced grocery store and 293 parking spaces) was designated to be a neighborhood in which construction of low-income elderly housing units was to be prioritized:

“…Recognizing the critical need for elderly housing and having seen the repeated failures of earlier efforts, the Allston-Brighton Local Advisory Committee formed an Elderly Housing Site Finding committee. The purpose of this group was to survey all possible elderly housing sites in the community and to recommend that parcel which was most desirable, as well as feasible.

“A representative from the Boston Housing Authority and a planner from the Boston Redevelopment Authority met weekly with this group over a period of three months. The survey and analysis which the committee undertook was the most comprehensive elderly housing site study ever undertaken in Allston/Brighton…Only one site, at Washington and Corey Road, appeared suitable…The Elderly Housing Site Finding Committee recommended to the Boston Redevelopment Authority that it initiate whatever appropriate actions were required in order to make available the Washington-Corey Road site for elderly housing…

“The proposed use of the Washington-Corey Road NDP urban renewal area is in conformance with two major policies established by the 1965/1975 General Plan for the City of Boston…”

Yet according to the New Creek LLC and WSP1725 Holding LLC affiliates of the suburban Long Island-based Kimco Realty Corporation of New Hyde Park, NY’s “Project Notification Form” for its 15 Washington Street real estate development deal in Brighton/Brookline, “existing uses on the Project Site consists of a Whole Foods neighborhood grocery store, a Citizens Bank, and surface parking;” but “the existing condition of the Project Site as a small `suburban’ retail center with surface parking is incongruous with its urban location.”

So Kimco Realty’s “proposed architectural solution” is to create “a street wall along Washington Street of a height of 85 to 80.5 feet, which is the tallest portion of the Project at a street edge;” and, “as Washington Street slopes down towards Brookline…this component is stepped down to five floors at the back of the sidewalk line or 65 feet in height from 85 to 80 feet of height at the west end of the Project Site.” In addition, Kimco’s affiliates also propose to construct “a 4-story, or 49-foot height section” in a predominantly market rate, non-elderly apartment complex “along Allston Street.”

But, as Kimco’s Project Notification Form indicates, a “special permit from the Zoning Board of Appeal” to build predominantly market rate apartments on the 15 Washington Street site in Brighton, which is still just zoned for commercial use, is required; and “under the underlying zoning…the allowed building height” at the 15 Washington Street site is only “up to 35 feet, which bulk and dimensional requirements are below the anticipated…height of the Project.”

Yet Section 7-3 of the Boston zoning code provides, in pertinent part, that the board may grant a variance "only if it finds that all of the following conditions are met:

"….(b) That…the granting of the variance is necessary for the reasonable use of the land… [ and]
"(c) That the granting of the variance will…not be injurious to the neighborhood or otherwise detrimental to the public welfare[.]

"In determining its findings, the Board of Appeal shall take into account:
"….(2) the character and use of adjoining lots and those in the neighborhood; and
"(3) traffic conditions in the neighborhood."

And since over 80 percent of the 229 residential rental units in the proposed project at 15 Washington Street will be market rate and unaffordable to most current elderly residents of Allston-Brighton, other Boston communities and Brookline’s elderly residents, spending two years constructing a project that would gentrify, over-develop and “Manhattanize” the Washington Street-Corey Road Neighborhood urban renewal area, which was designated for elderly housing nearly 50 years ago, does not conform to policies established by the 1965/1975 General Plan for the City of Boston; and the proposed project does not create enough of an actual public benefit to merit a zoning variance allowing the building’s height to exceed 35 feet.

In addition, Kimco’s October 26, 2018 Project Notification form is recommending that, since “the intersection of Washington Street at Corey Road currently provides an exclusive pedestrian phase” (which helps elderly and disabled residents of the neighborhood more easily avoid being injured by turning traffic, etc.), “it may be helpful to change the intersection timing to eliminate the exclusive pedestrian phase;” presumably, to help reduce the level of Washington Street traffic gridlock that its proposed 15 Washington Street construction project will likely produce, while it is being built and after it is completed.

Unless an actual public benefit for people who live and shop in Brighton/Brookline’s Washington Street-Corey Road Neighborhood can be shown, the quality of life for residents of this Boston-Brookline neighborhood should not be disturbed. Yet if Kimco’s construction project is authorized to begin, for 2 years around 250 construction workers (50 percent of whom may not be residents of Boston) will be disturbing the quality of life for Brighton/Btookline neighborhood residents and Whole Foods shoppers each weekday between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. (and sometimes even after 6 p.m.) in order to, gentrify, over-develop and “Manhattanize” Washington Street; with an 80 to 85-foot high apartment complex wall adjacent to a narrow section of Washington Street that lacks the same number of traffic lanes for cars and trucks possessed by either Brighton’s Commonwealth Avenue, Brookline’s Beacon Street or Upper West Side Manhattan’s Broadway boulevard.

In addition, if the New York-based Kimco’s proposed “ISEBY” [“In Somebody Else’s Back Yard”] construction project is approved, air quality impacts from fugitive dust may be expected during demolition, excavation and the early phases of construction; and the air quality impacts from fugitive dust may produce increased breathing difficulties for the elderly residents of Brighton/Brookline’s Washington Street-Corey Road Neighborhood urban renewal area.

One possible way to insure that new 21st-century residential apartment buildings constructed in the Washington Street-Corey Road urban renewal area both conform to the policies established by the 1965/1975 General Plan for the City of Boston (which prioritized the need to build housing for the elderly in this neighborhood) and also not exceed 35 feet in height, might be for the City of Boston to use its power of eminent domain to transfer control of the 15 Washington Street commercial use land site from Kimco to either the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation or a non-profit organization that prioritizes the construction of senior housing apartments; and only after the for-profit Kimco real estate deal-making firm is no longer in control of the 15 Washington Street land should any reconstruction of the Amazon-Whole Foods grocery store near the corner of Allston Street and Washington Street (rather than on top of the grocery store's current location at Corey Road and Washington Street) be considered or authorized.