Andover Newton Theological Seminary Redevelopment | Newton

Okay, so I'm convinced. Student housing would be the best use for the site. That would help free up housing and allow more people to live in the area. At the same time, students will conduct most of their activities on campus, and when they leave will utilize the Green Line, walking, and shuttle buses in higher percentages than others would.

A new residential or commercial development that is non-student would be too constrained by the one access road. Yes, it is unfair to call it a cul de sac, but a development here would attract enough drivers that the single access road can't handle. It will be used as a glorified cul de sac. This is the first time in my life I've used traffic concerns to get in the way of my support of a development. But it's also very applicable here. Student housing would not encounter those problems as much.
 
There's a decent amount of event space that could be kept in play, too, you can see pics here:

http://www.ants.edu/about/rental-space/facilities-available-rates

Maybe I should say put back into play. Having lived in the neighborhood for fifteen years, I've always been amazed at how little these event spaces are on my radar screen. I've heard the same from lots of my neighbors; we all go for walks up there, but it's a rare day when some event draws us into one of the ANTS spaces. Easy to forget they're even there. Hebrew College seems to thrive by contrast; I've been in there more often though I'm not Jewish.

Elsewhere on that web site you can see descriptions and a few pics of living spaces. Pretty wide range, some dorms, but also a mix of studios, 1BR and 2BRs.
 
West said:
Hebrew College seems to thrive by contrast; I've been in there more often though I'm not Jewish.
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Well, Hebrew College has been thriving recently. The HC campus was designed to be twice the size that it is - it was meant to feature an auditorium/concert hall and significantly more classroom space than it has. They actually had a scale model of it up in the admin suite. When the economy crashed, all their funds dried up, and they very nearly were forced to sell the whole thing about 5 years ago.

The current president has trimmed the budget and saved the property, and I've heard whispers about getting those latter phases back on the road. I believe that they own the land they need to do it (double their current buildings and mirror them to make a "staple" shape, and you've about got it). I suspect that ANTS moving will trigger something, because HC leases a bunch of classroom space for Prozdor (it's "Hebrew School" that a bunch of us went to) and its seminary. If the ANTS buildings come down, that's got to go somewhere - the campus as-is has very few actual classrooms.

BTW, Myra Kraft was a Prozdor grad and donated a bunch of money to build HC in the first place. If they need money, they probably can get it.
 
West said:
Connection to Langley is right out: Langley is lined with houses all the way except for one utility easement that heads down to where Madoc Street stubs into Langley. That would be dangerously steep.

There's also a hell of a drop down to Cypress, that would be tough. You could angle down the hill dropping down as you descend southward. But the hillside engineering needed for that would mar the hill godawfully, and you'd dump traffic right onto Cypress near Bowen School. Cypress just there is a shitshow every morning during school because everybody but us and maybe five other families drive their kiddies to Bowen instead of letting them walk like kids ought to do (this is a huge pet peeve of mine). So that'd be a mess dropping a road down into that if said road carried anything at all. And it would incur wild-eyed NIMBY rage.

The idea of connection to Langley could have worked through the shitty new development to the south. There IS a little paved access roadlet that's locked off - emergency fire entrance, I think, not open to use. One of the many ways the pooch got screwed on that site. Can't do it now, all walled off with ugly shit, unless you could force open that access road. Good luck.

I like your idea but I think the ship sailed on it. I think this probably stays a cul-de-sac. Constrains the options, no doubt. But the proximity to the T and some retail and the beauty of the site are all pretty damn compelling. This is about the prettiest cul de sac development I think I've ever seen in my life. If it's fair to call it that - kind of isn't fair, its layout long predates what we usually think of when we think cul de sac development.

ETA: there IS a sidewalk that drops down to Cypress, and plenty of walkers use the utility easement to cut down to Langley though I think we're not supposed to. The Bowen kids all knew the various ways to cut from Bowen up to the ANTS campus through the woods, and they shared complex kid-legends around every rock outcropping along the way, but The Shitty Estates obliterated that.
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there's also (or used to be) a good little cut from langley down the hillside to the dead end street that connects to stiles terrace.. not sure if it's still open, it was probably on private property but saved a lot of foot time for those in need of said cut.
 
West said:
but The Shitty Estates obliterated that.
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Just looked at that development on Google for the first time. Like something out of a Tim Burton movie. Who knew such soul-sucking drab sterility existed outside of Las Vegas/Phoenix/L.A./Albuquerque/Desert Southwest cul-de-sac subdivision agglomerations?
 
I looked at the Newton assessor's site and was very surprised on one point. The parcel on which the Andover Newton Theological School sits has very limited frontage on Cypress to the west. The Shitty Estates parcel to the south also has an arm that reaches way up along the west side of ANTS' parcel along Cypress. I think that parcel reaches about to the stairway that goes up to the ANTS campus from Cypress, for those of you know what I mean by that. ANTS also owns a few smaller parcels farther north along Cypress. Those are the parcels of those big victorian houses on the side of Herrick as you head up the hill: houses face Herrick Rd but their parcels don't actually reach Herrick, the parcels do extend out back to Cypress.

So I think a road down from the campus to Cypress is even more constrained than I had thought, as ANTS controls far less of that hillside than I had realized.

On the other side, the Hebrew College parcel only has one tiny bit of road frontage out on Langley Rd, at the spot where that foot path is that I mentioned above. It's a narrow arm of land between the last of the oder houses on the north and The Shitty Estates to the South (yes, I am calling them that permanently, have been doing so for a few years actually). I think some of their telecom utilities come up that sliver of land from Langley. They must certainly also have an easement across ANTS parcel from the end of Herrick Rd, though the assessor's site does not depict that. The assessor's online map shows the publicly owned part of Herrick stopping well short of the split off to Hebrew College, the last part is private per the assessor's page (which is not always perfectly accurate).

The assessor page is a bit funky on this campus. If you go to the map and click on the big parcel, it takes you to a property card that only has one building of about 12,500 sq ft. But if you search under Herrick Rd generally, you can see other parcel listings, including the $40M assessed main thing. That main card parcel states 216,675 square feet of building space. If you add to the main 216K those abutting houses plus that one building split onto a different card, perhaps you should add about 14K to 15K 15,000 sq feet, tops out at roughly 230,000 square feet of building space. As I said, it's all listed a bit confusingly, so I can't be sure I'm not double-counting a small building or two.

The assessor's listing for next door Hebrew College is a lot cleaner, they show that as having 86,824 sq ft. Just eye-balling from aerials and memory, the sq footage ratio of 230K / 86K between ANTS and Hebrew College seems ballpark realistic.
 
So, I was in Newton Centre today and driving way when I happened to bump into the father of someone I went to elementary school with. Said father readily admitted he's part of the neighborhood group "Friends Of Herrick Green" that are rather... apprehensive... about what might happen there.

In his own words: "yes, we could use a lot more housing, but they have to get it right."

All the houses uphill from Newton Center T stop now have lawn signs that say "Friends Of Herrick Green,".... which if you think about it, is a pretty smart way for a basically garden-variety NIMBY group to brand/position itself.

http://www.friendsofherrickgreen.org/

I really hope something works out here that does allow for a thoughtfully designed swath of residential development that gracefully transitions to the surrounding neighborhood, while also taking advantage of this practically unheard-of combination of size (22 acres!!!) and mass transit proximity (even the furthest piece of the parcel is no more than 800 yards from the Newton Center T stop). But, the surrounding neighborhood is presumably quite wealthy and influential, so I'm not holding my breath.

On the other hand, this 68-unit proposal in Newtonville did recently get approved, and this 151-unit development might happen, so... maybe Newton's changing?


P.S. Bonus Hollywood celebrity connection: per the Newton assessors database, the Krasinski family [as in John] lives just 300 yards from the development site.
 
I think Newton is gradually (very grudgingly) more open to denser proposals. However, the constraint on this property will be that lone entrance. If you go to the assessor's site and look at the parcel, there are no other realistic ways to connect to the world aside from Herrick Street. The parcel does connect out to surrounding streets but when you go look at the topography of those connections, they're way too steep. So this will be one place where the squawking about traffic will have a better grounding in reality than the usual squawking about traffic.

The other oddball thing about this site is that it already has a bunch of housing on it. Much of it empty, due to the long-fading fortunes of the Seminary. Old timers around the neighborhood comment on how many more people there used to be living up there. It's pretty heartbreaking to go for walks up there, as we often do on weekends, and realize just how much of it is empty. We're talking dozens and dozens of dwelling units, most of them not designed as dorm rooms but as small apartments, sitting empty. You could convert a few of the classroom buildings to housing and probably get support from the neighborhood without too much of a fight.

I've been snooping around with my (meager) BC connections, no luck yet. I still want BC to buy it and use all that for grad student housing, since they currently do precisely jack squat to help their grad students with housing. I'm harping on an old theme, I admit it.

The dance between the residents and BC would also be hilarious if nothing else. Lots of bad blood between Newton and BC generally, but the most bitter of bad blood is in neighborhoods further east closer to Alumni Stadium. And BC is the lone money source I can think of that might buy the site and leave it in something similar to its current form. If BC did that, and wanted to convert all the classrooms to housing, and maybe even add a bit more housing, but allow public pedestrian access and keep the layout more or less intact, I'd be LOUDLY in support of that. I'm not sure how many more actual residents that would add to the hilltop over today's context, but I'm guessing at least several hundred, a few of them with kiddies in tow. And they'd be mostly people of modest incomes that in today's world compete for Allston Brighton apartments. That would not be nothing. By the standards of Newton's usual annual contribution to the housing crunch (ahem), it would be pretty huge, actually.

If a private developer buys it and comes in with something like the McMansion shit down hill to the south on former Seminary land towards Bowen school, they'll get a huge fight. And that sort of McMansion crap would house fewer residents that re-purposing the existing dwellings. From a design and city planning perspective, it would be a tragedy.
 
Site will stay educational/institutional:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/20...wton-campus/ds80d30hvydBctch3qlMUP/story.html

“The foundation prefers that its name and identity not be disclosed until the transaction is completed but has asked us to assure the community that the campus is not being sold to a real estate developer and to reiterate that the foundation intends to maintain the campus for educational purposes — as it has long been utilized.”
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Kind of unfortunate, actually. Newton needs density near T stations.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if BC bought the land with the intent of building more dorms. That would still add density to the site.
 
tysmith95 said:
I wouldn't be surprised if BC bought the land with the intent of building more dorms. That would still add density to the site.
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BC isn't a "foundation," and this quote doesn't sound like BC: "The foundation has deep ties to the region and a longstanding commitment to education." BC has a commitment to education, but I don't think that's how one would talk about a major college.

The full text of the letter, btw, says that ANTS will vacate after March 23, 2017.
 
I agree, BC hasn't been so coy in prior land acquisitions, if this were BC they'd probably be willing to say so.

If the "foundation" is running educational activities elsewhere in Boston, but without available housing, this could still end up a net win for housing (viewed broadly perhaps, if they're coming from far away in the metro area). The theological society has been in decline for decades, there are many dwelling units sitting vacant up there. Just putting them back into play would be a net effective increase in housing, especially if there's a bunch of students currently living in apartments somewhere else who can move here. I realize I'm making a somewhat tortuous argument here.

As discussed before, the location only seems like a good location for a density boost when viewed from Google, and when making assumptions that don't even fly very well in Boston, let alone Newton. The ingress / egress sucks, and if we can't even get Boston (in outer neighborhoods) to reduce parking requirement, we've got even less chance of Newton doing so. Also, much of the site is steep topography.

If you could get the densest possible new development there that could get battled through Newton politics, I bet it would be a shockingly low gain in net total number of units compared to what is up there already. The existing housing is composed mostly quite small and modest apartments in multi-story buildings - there's more than you think up there. That is, there exists up there the kind of housing that's nigh on impossible to get built new in Newton. It's just been mostly vacant for decades!! If it got filled with some new crop of students leaving "regular" apartments in Brighton (for an example plucked at random), that'd be a gain.
 
I know this is a stretch but would a Suffolk move to Newton be possible. I know that school has had lots of financial trouble so they could use a cash infusion that selling their downtown location would provide. I'm sure that if they were considering the move they would want andover/Newton to be quiet until the deal is finished.
 
tysmith95 said:
I know this is a stretch but would a Suffolk move to Newton be possible. I know that school has had lots of financial trouble so they could use a cash infusion that selling their downtown location would provide. I'm sure that if they were considering the move they would want andover/Newton to be quiet until the deal is finished.
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I think it is a stretch, but it's certainly an interesting stretch, and makes some logical sense on the $ side (sale of downtown property likely way higher value than the Newton campus).

Unless I have a badly mistaken idea of Suffolk's size, though, I don't see the space swap working out so well. But I am not sure I'm right on that.

It'd be pretty weird for Suffolk to leave Suffolk County - would they rebrand? Aside from the county change, it'd be one hell of a lurch, from downtown to leafy suburb. Like when Columbia left then-NYC to move to the orchards up near Harlem.

As a Newton resident, I'd be concerned to have one failing institution sell to another failing institution - I want someone with some stamina to come in. Suffolk seems to have an infinite stamina for shooting itself in the foot (and the knee, the stomach, the head), aside from that .......

I'll admit I've been playing this game, though: could it be ___ college, or ___ private school, or ___? March is not so long to wait.
 
^you're correct. Suffolk has about 10k students which is way too large for this location. However I could see them moving just their law school or another department out here.

I'll stop the speculation though. There are so many different opportunities for a site like this.
 
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tysmith95 said:
^you're correct. Suffolk has about 10k students which is way too large for this location. However I could see them moving just their law school or another department out here.

I'll stop the speculation though. There are so many different opportunities for a site like this.
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TYSmith -- I'm guessing its something similar to the Olin Foundation that spent several years silently acquiring the site for Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering --

finally in 1997 it was launched -- created from scratch and planted in the western suburbs with an endowment of
379.4 million USD (2015)
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or perhaps a charter school?
 
tysmith95 said:
^you're correct. Suffolk has about 10k students which is way too large for this location. However I could see them moving just their law school or another department out here.

I'll stop the speculation though. There are so many different opportunities for a site like this.
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As a Suffolk Law graduate, I think we have a better chance of seeing a 60 story building go up in the Seaport than the Suffolk Law School move out of downtown. First, they have a state of the art law school building in a fantastic downtown location that is only 15 or so years old. Second, the large night school program would take a huge hit if the school was no longer in downtown. Many of the night students have jobs during the day in or near downtown and then rush over to classes as soon as work ends. Lastly, the clinical programs would suffer significantly if the law school moved to the suburbs. Having walking distance/subway access to the courts, judges, attorneys etc. that are downtown is crucial for a regional law school like Suffolk.
 
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