Chestnut Hill Infill and Small Developments

stick n move

stick n move

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Someone said there should be a separate thread for chestnut hill and I think thats a good idea. Chestnut hill is a village but its located within 3 different towns, brookline, newton, and brighton, so projects there get spread all around into different threads and separated. This will help keep them in one place.

Anyways.

Zoning & Planning examines Brookline’s proposed rezoning on Route 9​

Brookline-Rte9-zoning.jpg.webp


“Newton’s Zoning and Planning Committee met on March 9 with Brookline town officials to discuss Brookline’s proposal to rezone a stretch of Route 9 in Chestnut Hill. Committee members wanted to learn more about the proposal and its potential impacts on traffic, planning, and development along the Route 9 corridor.

Brookline’s proposed rezoning district covers about 27.8 acres over six blocks along Route 9 in Brookline between Hammond Street and Hammond Pond Parkway. The area currently consists of older, underutilized commercial parcels and parking lots. The proposed zoning overlay would allow for buildings as high as 150 to 175 feet (12-14 stories) on some parcels, with heights tapering lower on the parcels closest to Newton.

Chair Lisle Baker noted that Route 9 is one of Newton’s four major east-west corridors and reminded attendees that Newton and Brookline have a history of informal collaboration on land-use issues relating to the Star Market reconstruction and the Chestnut Hill Square/Wegman’s Plaza development, for example……….”

www.figcitynews.com

Zoning & Planning examines Brookline’s proposed rezoning on Route 9

Newton’s Zoning and Planning Committee met on March 9 with Brookline town officials to discuss Brookline’s proposal to rezone a stretch of Route 9 in Chestnut Hill. Committee members wanted to learn more about the proposal and its potential impacts on traffic, planning, and development along the...
www.figcitynews.com www.figcitynews.com
 
















Chestnut Hill Commercial Area Study | Brookline, MA - Official Website

The Chestnut Hill Commercial Area Study will examine opportunities for incentivizing significant net new commercial tax growth, as well as enhance the livability and identity of the Chestnut Hill commercial area.
www.brooklinema.gov www.brooklinema.gov


Public Portal • CivicClerk

CivicClerk events and agendas for citizens
brooklinema.portal.civicclerk.com brooklinema.portal.civicclerk.com
 
I know those are maximum build massing models, but I don’t have much confidence that the end result will be much different. If every building needs a bank of elevators and two stairwells, amortizing that across a block sized land scraper is more profitable than multiple different buildings per block.
 
I feel like the end result will be different too but for a different reason. I feel like this is going to be VE’d to death and the community is NEVER going to let this happen. Chestnut Hill seems even more nimby then the rest of brookline somehow. If theres any spot though it should be built up here because unlike the vast majority of route 9 this spot is a 5 minute walk to the green line station.

If it is allowed to happen though it would be nice to have a single stair law passed in brookline before then so the massing could be closer to beacon st in brookline vs alewife.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
They want to build an urban center with a 6-lane divided highway running down the middle? Love that bike rider shoehorned into the corner there.

They need a serious road diet if they think they want this to succeed as a place.
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This is unfortunately a pattern that is repeating itself all over the country. Suburban area has a 4 or 6 lane stroad with some old dead strip malls or box stores on each side. They believe they can upzone those plots (and those plots only) and they’ll somehow get Champs-Élysées.
 
I think that stretch of Route 9 could benefit from de-highway-izing even more than other similar roads - the Hammond Street intersection is signalized, so it's not like people are used to speeding through there anyway. Access on the Newton (WB) side is really kludged with multiple one-way slip ramps. Take the clean sheet opportunity to punch one or two access points through, get rid of the grassy median, and pull travel speeds down to 35.

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RT9 is an overused road as it is... I think you'd struggle to get buy in for a road diet at any level, as it's such a heavily used corridor East of 95, but especially the Chestnut Hill segment. I don't think I've ever been on that corridor and seen it not incredibly busy - I would generally assume that traffic speeds rarely approach the speed limit, simply due to congestion... Certainly every time I've driven it has been well below.
 
Jeremi said:
This is unfortunately a pattern that is repeating itself all over the country. Suburban area has a 4 or 6 lane stroad with some old dead strip malls or box stores on each side. They believe they can upzone those plots (and those plots only) and they’ll somehow get Champs-Élysées.
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So then I think a fun design challenge is how can you build quality urban space around a highway or highway-like road. Obviously a road diet is the easy design/hard political choice, so what's the opposite? How far can you get with footbridges, decking, sound barriers, etc?
 
TheRatmeister said:
So then I think a fun design challenge is how can you build quality urban space around a highway or highway-like road. Obviously a road diet is the easy design/hard political choice, so what's the opposite? How far can you get with footbridges, decking, sound barriers, etc?
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I was thinking that decking over the segment of Rte 9 throughout the project limits would be great, establishing a ped and bike environment on the second level, looking something like the deck on the Lyric Back Bay, but larger. Some low rise buildings could cover portions of the deck. The ground level would be for autos/trucks only, serving the highway plus garage entrances and cross-street traffic.
 
Stlin said:
RT9 is an overused road as it is... I think you'd struggle to get buy in for a road diet at any level, as it's such a heavily used corridor East of 95, but especially the Chestnut Hill segment. I don't think I've ever been on that corridor and seen it not incredibly busy - I would generally assume that traffic speeds rarely approach the speed limit, simply due to congestion... Certainly every time I've driven it has been well below.
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Bingo - "road diet" for that particular clusterfuck area is the very last thing I would dare do - - that already is a clogged aorta waiting for a heart attack. Traffic there is nightmarish 12 hours per day in both directions.

I do like Charlie's subsequent idea though - if anything, do the reverse Big Dig there and add levels (I know that would never financially happen in reality, but the theory would be good there).
 
shmessy said:
Bingo - "road diet" for that particular clusterfuck area is the very last thing I would dare do - - that already is a clogged aorta waiting for a heart attack. Traffic there is nightmarish 12 hours per day in both directions.

I do like Charlie's subsequent idea though - if anything, do the reverse Big Dig there and add levels (I know that would never financially happen in reality, but the theory would be good there).
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It's not a road diet, it's a road rationalization. Same number of travel lanes, just a narrower footprint and fewer curb cuts.
 
Equilibria said:
It's not a road diet, it's a road rationalization. Same number of travel lanes, just a narrower footprint and fewer curb cuts.
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I hear ya about the de-highwayizing and the slip ramps, but Rte 9 there is still a terrible choke point. And it will only grow - especially with that new development possibilty- Charlie's added level theory would work here (if only the financials did too). Something creative is required there - they just can't keep dumping more congestion on it without relieving the pressure.
 
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Working off pre-covid data so not the MOST up to date but a still relatively recent assessment of the Brookline portion of the corridor with some hopefully helpful numbers and recommendations. Neither a road-diet nor lane expansion are recommended given anticipated (though again, likely out of date) 2030 conditions.

MassDOT also identified the corridor as a "top tier" priority (top 2.5% of roadway miles) for bicycle infrastructure in their recent gap analysis: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/263b43d819dc492c8796da16207c2a83/
 
BronsonShore said:
Absolutely no one should be talking about adding car capacity to Route 9. It's 2026; we're not trying to go backwards here.
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Drop a lane in each direction of Rte 9 and replace those with bus lanes, plus separated bike lanes. Would that create more auto congestion? Probably, but the improved bus speeds and service, plus making it amenable to bikes, would reduce the volume of car traffic.
 
If there is market demand for TOD then I think we should support it, even in pedestrian-hostile locations like this. The new developments will serve as justification for future pedestrian & bike improvements and the residents themselves will be credible advocates for their own new neighborhood. Right now, advocacy for pedestrians and cyclists on that corridor must sound quite theoretical for anyone who isn't already a committed urbanist.
 
BronsonShore said:
Absolutely no one should be talking about adding car capacity to Route 9. It's 2026; we're not trying to go backwards here.
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Absolutely. 100% agree.

But this massive development, with those new 12-14 story buildings, would most certainly result in additional car/truck congestion in this bottleneck. Simply wishing that that amount of additional development won't further choke it isn't reality. Creative solutions (underpasses?, pedestrian bridges? relocating the Chestnut Hill Green Line station?, elevated monorail down Rte 9? etc.) would need to be employed. It's already a traffic chokepoint, adding this new massive development would be like throwing gasoline on a fire, without transpo changes. Given the obvious effects of this development, I'm all ears to hear the solutions.
 
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