Dorchester Infill and Small Developments

stick n move said:
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2026-10-07_Revised Project Notification Form (RPNF)_80 Christopher Street.pdf | Powered by Box

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WTH is going on with the views looking west along Christopher? Specifically rendering #1 and #2. They are showing future development that is not part of this project but with the same color palette? Possibly getting a little too AI heavy on making the building look like it is blending into the surrounding. At least they are showing the current construction project at 80 Park Street.
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stick n move said:
Itd be nice if we could do this to all 1 story retail buildings around the city

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Just like the office-to-residential conversion program, I've often wondered at the viability of tax incentives to encourage upward construction of 1-story retail buildings. These buildings dominate so many commercial corridors and are density sinks.. adding 3-5 stories on top like this example would go a long way towards addressing the housing shortage all with buildings at a scale that NIMBYs would struggle to build opposition against (of course they would still try..).

Definitely questions around impact on existing businesses and, relatedly, which buildings are worth preserving as part of redevelopment vs. total teardowns. Could a tax incentive work to spur upscaling of these building types?
 
lexicon506 said:
Just like the office-to-residential conversion program, I've often wondered at the viability of tax incentives to encourage upward construction of 1-story retail buildings. These buildings dominate so many commercial corridors and are density sinks.. adding 3-5 stories on top like this example would go a long way towards addressing the housing shortage all with buildings at a scale that NIMBYs would struggle to build opposition against (of course they would still try..).

Definitely questions around impact on existing businesses and, relatedly, which buildings are worth preserving as part of redevelopment vs. total teardowns. Could a tax incentive work to spur upscaling of these building types?
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Yea when you really pay attention to how many 1 story retail buildings there are its staggering. Theres tens of thousands of them, and theyre on every main road. Some roads are worse than others, but blue hill ave always sticks out as one of the worst offenders.
 
ball_square said:
It looks like the business on the first floor was able to stay open? If so, that's amazing. That is my (and I presume many others') only reservation with blanket build-up of our major squares--preservation of long-standing neighborhood businesses.
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I wonder how many of those old 'taxpayer' one story buildings were actually built, from the get-go, with the structural provisions to go vertical eventually? If I understand the history correctly, they were made to be one story to keep their property valuations down during the depression...some owners back then, though, must have been thinking about the bigger-picture, right?
(EDIT: I think some of them even were multi-story originally and then had their upper stories pulled off. Those should, in theory, have the columns/foundation to receive that load again)
 
bigpicture7 said:
I wonder how many of those old 'taxpayer' one story buildings were actually built, from the get-go, with the structural provisions to go vertical eventually? If I understand the history correctly, they were made to be one story to keep their property valuations down during the depression...some owners back then, though, must have been thinking about the bigger-picture, right?
(EDIT: I think some of them even were multi-story originally and then had their upper stories pulled off. Those should, in theory, have the columns/foundation to receive that load again)
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Correct on the edit -- a significant number of buildings around Boston were de-storied during the Great Depression to cut down on taxes.
 
stick n move said:
Yea when you really pay attention to how many 1 story retail buildings there are its staggering. Theres tens of thousands of them, and theyre on every main road. Some roads are worse than others, but blue hill ave always sticks out as one of the worst offenders.
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I think a lot of those 1 story buildings were formerly 'parking garages' for horses lol. Businesses like bakeries would have separate buildings for delivery horses (similar to the pic of tire-shop on Bowdoin). Shows as Hancock St on the old map, but Hancock was rerouted a few times back in the day (Bowdoin marked in blue on the old map, Hancock now follows the green path). Some were also used for transportation, like the ones recently in the area where Hancock St meets Dot Ave. This part of Hancock was called Freeport St back in the day.
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cooper said:
I think a lot of those 1 story buildings were formerly 'parking garages' for horses lol. Businesses like bakeries would have separate buildings for delivery horses (similar to the pic of tire-shop on Bowdoin). Shows as Hancock St on the old map, but Hancock was rerouted a few times back in the day (Bowdoin marked in blue on the old map, Hancock now follows the green path). Some were also used for transportation, like the ones recently in the area where Hancock St meets Dot Ave. This part of Hancock was called Freeport St back in the day.
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Usually urban stables and carriage houses were two story structures. Ground floor with carriage storage, horse stalls and a tack room; upper floor with hay loft and coachman's quarters. We started building single story garages for cars pretty early in the Twentieth Century.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Usually urban stables and carriage houses were two story structures. Ground floor with carriage storage, horse stalls and a tack room; upper floor with hay loft and coachman's quarters. We started building single story garages for cars pretty early in the Twentieth Century.
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Here's a one-story horsecar station barn at Fields Corner.
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This quote from a Dorchster Atheum article also explains why there are so many one story retail buildings in Dorchester:

"Prior to 1924, Dorchester grew dynamically with "rental-over-retail" blocks and triple-deckers being built freely around main transit lines. In 1924, Boston passed its first building regulation and zoning act (Chapter 488 of the Acts of 1924). Following the national trend of separation of uses, this code divided areas into rigid single-family and strictly commercial blocks, making it highly difficult or illegal to combine residential apartments directly over standard commercial spaces without heavy variances".
 
My understanding is that a lot of the taxpayers were/are low quality building, eventually designed to be replaced, so unable to be built on top of today. However, unless they're literally falling down, the calculation I've seen is you usually need to be able to go ~6 stories to replace them. You see this in Allston a lot.
 
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