What "Fits" in Hyde Square? One Resident's Experience

Five years ago, I fell in love with a little brown house with a broken-down chain-link fence, missing shingles, boarded-up windows, a crumbling chimney, water in the basement, bittersweet and poison ivy in the back yard, and a single naked light bulb that dangled from a busted fixture and lit the front porch 24 hours a day. Somehow, in my travels around Jamaica Plain to learn about the community I had just moved to from the South Shore where I grew up, I had ventured onto tiny Cranston Street, which sits high above Paul Gore and Sheridan Streets in Hyde Square. The little brown house perched on the cliff was for sale. A few months and lots of elbow grease and sleepless nights later, my partner and I owned it and moved in.

As we got to know our Cranston Street neighbors, we learned that they had been involved in a multi-year struggle with various local, city and state agencies about the auto body shop sitting behind and below our houses on a dog's leg side street off Paul Gore. For years the neighborhood had been plagued by noxious paint fumes and ear-splitting metal-on-metal grinding and pounding, not only during regular work hours, but often in the evenings and on weekends and holidays as well. The prevailing breeze that cools our homes in the summer and regularly drops the mercury below zero in the winter brought with it all the noises and smells of Paul Gore Street and the auto body shop. Often the only escape was leaving Cranston hill.

My neighbors regularly complained to the auto body's owner, whose stock answer was that we should just keep our windows closed. The Inspectional Services Department, the Mayor’s Office, our district and at-large city councilors, and even the JP Gazette, had grown weary of Cranston Street's tale of woe and stopped returning our calls. The prevailing opinion of city officials seemed to be that the auto body had a right to operate its business where it was and there was nothing anyone could do to change that. The fact that the previous owner had gamed the system in 2001 and added a paint booth without notifying abutters simply fell on deaf ears.

Then the current owner of the auto body applied for a zoning variance to significantly expand his business. The Zoning Committee of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council would hear the request for a variance, and my neighbors got ready.

They contacted all of our elected officials and every city and state agency remotely connected to air quality, environmental impacts, and noise. No one wanted to get involved. Despite repeatedly hitting official dead-ends, they drew up a petition and canvassed the neighborhood. When they had talked to the people who live in the more than 200 homes that line the streets immediately abutting the auto body -- Cranston, Termine, Sheridan, Paul Gore, and Centre Street in Hyde Square -- virtually every single person opposed the variance. Only 4 or 5 individuals supported the auto body's expansion. Many, including most of the Cranston Street residents, wanted the business to move because they viewed it as incompatible with our increasingly dense residential neighborhood.

By the time the JPNC Zoning Committee met, my neighbors had prepared neat stacks of photocopies of their petition, as well as articles from scientific and health journals about the toxicity of the volatile organic compounds found in auto paints. They had created a color-coded map that showed every house in the neighborhood and where its residents stood on the expansion. They came as one to the Zoning Committee to plead their cause, fully backed up by research, evidence, a comprehensive survey of community opinion, and facts.

What happened next? My good neighbors received a lecture from the Zoning Committee.

Didn’t we understand that the auto body had a right to operate where it did? Didn’t we understand that it had been grandfathered in when the current zoning regulations were adopted by the City of Boston? It didn’t matter that such a business could not, today, be built or would not be allowed to operate in that location. The auto body had a right to be there. We had better just get used to the fact that it wasn’t going anywhere.

The JPNC's Zoning Committee and the Boston Zoning Board of Appeals then gave our neighborhood a brief respite. They rejected the auto body’s planned massive expansion, but the JPNC invited the owner to return any time if he had a different proposal. A year later, he did just that when he filed a new zoning variance request and plans for a slightly smaller expansion. Again, my neighbors went to bat, trying to find any local or city official or agency who would stand by us in opposition to the auto body's expansion. And again, we heard that the auto body had a right to operate in the middle of our residential neighborhood and nothing could be done about it.

After six years of fighting, having failed to persuade a single public official or agency that the auto body did not belong in our neighborhood and shouldn't be permitted to expand, and having been repeatedly told that the auto body had a right to be there and it wasn't going anywhere, my exhausted and dispirited neighbors negotiated an agreement with the owner. We agreed that we would not oppose his request for a modest expansion if he switched to water-based paints, added soundproofing, and operated only during regular work hours and not on weekends and holidays. With that agreement in place and hoping for the best, we crossed our weary fingers and reported to the JPNC Zoning Committee and the Boston ZBA that we did not oppose the requested variance.

About a year later, the auto body renovation and expansion was done. A huge exhaust stack now sits directly under Cranston Street. That promised switch to water-based paints? Apparently the final coat is still the old-fashioned stuff, so whenever a final coat is being applied, eye-watering fumes now flood our neighborhood and waft down Termine and Sheridan Streets as well. When the breeze is just right, it’s literally impossible to breathe in our back yards and for our neighbors across the street to sit on their front porch. We’ve begun to make phone calls and contact city officials again, and again we are being told that the auto body has a right to be there and nothing can be done. Again the owner of the auto body shop is telling us to keep our windows closed.

Why am I telling this story? Because five years ago, my neighbors argued that an auto body shop was not a good fit for our Hyde Square neighborhood. Five years ago, we overwhelmingly and peacefully opposed the expansion of the auto body and wanted it to move to a commercial district. Five years ago, the JPNC rebuffed us at every turn, telling us we should have known what we were in for when we moved into the neighborhood, and lecturing us about the owner’s absolute right to operate his business in our back yards.

Today, the JPNC says that a grocery store that has an absolute right to operate in the building it has leased in Hyde Square's retail district should not open its doors because it is not a good "fit" for my neighborhood. Today, the JPNC has held multiple community forums and convened an ad hoc committee to urge that grocery store to reconsider its decision to come to JP and to actively find an alternative tenant for its building. Today, some of our elected officials repeat the same refrain. The JPNC is compelled to take this action, it says, because "the neighborhood" doesn’t want that grocery store, even while the Council acknowledges that no survey of neighborhood opinion has been done and many people in the neighborhood do, in fact, want the store.

I have watched the current debate about Whole Foods unfold with increasing disbelief and anger. Where was the JPNC and its concerns about what "fits" in Hyde Square and "what the neighborhood wants" five years ago? How is it that the JPNC is actively working to keep an organic and natural food market from opening in my neighborhood, while it permits another business down the street to spew noxious fumes into that same neighborhood? Where were our elected officials, the community forums, the full Council meetings and resolutions, and the ad hoc committee when my neighborhood wanted the auto body to leave and a "better fit" to be found for its building?

We live with the consequences of the JPNC's decisions on the auto body shop every day. Believe me, it's a lot easier to simply walk past a grocery store you don't want to shop in.