3430-3440 Washington St | Jamaica Plain

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A developer has filed plans to replace the venerable Hatoff's gas station and a neighboring auto-body shop with 256 apartments and ground-floor retail space in two buildings on either side of Rockvale Circle on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain.
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www.universalhub.com

Apartments is apartments, says Stan

A developer has filed plans to replace the venerable Hatoff's gas station and a neighboring auto-body shop with 256 apartments and ground-floor retail space in two buildings on either side of Rockvale Circle on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain. Read more.
www.universalhub.com www.universalhub.com

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sm89 said:
I'm confused about the approved gas station expansion plans here from a couple months back? https://www.universalhub.com/2024/more-gas-gas-says-stan-jamaica-plain-gas-station
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Last paragraph in that link:

"......Last fall, a developer proposed replacing the entire station with condos, but nothing official was ever filed with the BPDA. The proposal to add new pumps was reviewed by an ISD inspector on March 1 of this year, according to a stamp on the plans."

In effect, the proposal (negotiating tactic) was to go from 12 pumps on 6 islands to 20 pumps on 8 eight islands (that's almost highway rest-stop sized) and the additional 8 pumps would've been at the property line in back bordering the Kenton Street area neighborhood. Hard to fathom what already existed in that narrow Washington Street corridor. The proposal was outlandish.

So I'm guessing that was a "jack up the price" or "get a development agreement easier" negotiating tactic.
 
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Plus they already covered the traffic angle since they undoubtedly were met with complaints about increased traffic by the neighbors.

“According to Hassell's traffic consultant, the new buildings will generate a bit less daily traffic than the current gas station and auto-body shop, which also has an impound lot.”

Making the gas station nearly twice as big would bring nearly twice the traffic. So either pick the condos which brings less traffic than before or you get twice the traffic.
 
Looks like a great project. There should be so much more density around all the OL stations in JP!
 
FK4 said:
Wow. I really hope they build this as is. It’s absolutely huge though, I’m sure everyone’s going to scream and make sure it gets chopped down.
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Hard to say. Washington Street between Forest Hills and Green Street has several recent projects of similar scale. Those were approved at a time when there weren't enough people living along that corridor to put up any significant NIMBY fight. Perhaps the people who've moved into the new buildings aren't interested in such fights, either.
 
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HenryAlan said:
Hard to say. Washington Street between Forest Hills and Green Street has several recent projects of similar scale. Those were approved at a time when there weren't enough people living along that corridor to put up any significant NIMBY fight. Perhaps the people who've moved into the new buildings aren't interested in such fights, either.
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There has been a recent attempt to get 19 Kenton Road across the street landmarked to forestall the possibility of the existing property getting demolished/redeveloped. That said, I don't know if that effort has directly affected this project at all.
 
mssrro said:
There has been a recent attempt to get 19 Kenton Road across the street landmarked to forestall the possibility of the existing property getting demolished/redeveloped. That said, I don't know if that effort has directly affected this project at all.
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Hatoff’s is a historic example of early-mid twentieth century, auto-oriented aesthetic. It should be landmarked as well.

Seriously, 19 Kenton is an attractive house. But whereas I used to be much more of a preservationist, I think we preserve way too much around here. Not everything that is old needs to be preserved. Just from the outside, it’s pretty, and I wish houses still looked like this, but it’s nothing special. There are tons of attactive, wooden houses with clapboards and corbels. What about this building needs to be saved? In a perfect world, yes. But we are not in a perfect world. This isn’t even a district that should have any single-family homes anymore. Can’t we as a culture just learn how to acknowledge the beauty of something but also say goodbye?
 
HenryAlan said:
Hard to say. Washington Street between Forest Hills and Green Street has several recent projects of similar scale. Those were approved at a time when there weren't enough people living along that corridor to put up any significant NIMBY fight. Perhaps the people who've moved into the new buildings aren't interested in such fights, either.
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True, but this is not Forest Hills. In Boston, even a quarter mile can make a huge difference. In any case, looking more closely at the pictures, this thing rocks. The architectural nods to 19th century industrial brick, the columns, the cornice (I don’t know what it is called, it’s close to the roof line on one of the brick buildings), the way the two buildings face each other across the narrow side street… Of course you never know until you see the materials, but this thing looks like a seriously positive contribution. So I hope the neighborhood sees it as such.
 
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FK4 said:
Seriously, 19 Kenton is an attractive house. But whereas I used to be much more of a preservationist, I think we preserve way too much around here. Not everything that is old needs to be preserved.
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Yeah, it's nice. But there are hundreds, probably thousands of similar houses throughout Boston. My own house doesn't look very different from this one*, and I do not at all consider it to be any kind of preservation property.

* I would need to undo some cheap fixes made over the years to various aspects, but I'm quite sure the original build was about the same. In other words, I could restore it to that condition without too large an investment.
 
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-This received a variance that it needed to continue.


Washington St. Project Wins JPNC Variance Vote​


— 3430–3436 and 3440–3446 Washington Street, in which the owner-developer is seeking to construct two large buildings (which will be situated across Rockvale Circle from each other) on the present sites of Hatoff’s gasoline station and Acme Auto Body and Paint.

One of the buildings will be 6-stories in height with 130 residential units, ground-floor retail, and parking, for which variances are needed for forbidden use, excessive FAR, excessive height, a lack of open space, insufficient rear yard setback, and a lack of traffic visibility.

The other structure (on the Hatoff’s site) will be 5-stories high and will contain 100 apartment units with parking and ground floor retail for which the same variances are needed.

“This project almost exactly matches the plans per JP/ROX (the city’s proposed zoning guidelines for this district) for the replacement of a light industrial use to create housing with mixed use, as well as the height, and a density bonus for affordable housing units,” said Baron, who noted that about 23 percent of the rental units (46 of the 230) will be affordable, which is a greater percentage than what the city’s new inclusionary (IDP) guidelines call for.

 
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