BC expansion called too close for comfort
Neighbors worry about new dorms
By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff | June 7, 2007
For an entire enclave of Boston College neighbors, the seminary and the archdiocesan headquarters have always been seen as a crucial buffer between their homes and the rowdiness of a college campus. For BC, that same land has been seen as a critical opportunity to expand.
Now that the tranquil, wooded 64-acre swath could be replaced by college dormitories and athletic fields, irate residents said they fear they will not be living near a university campus anymore, but pretty much living on one.
And with that, a new and bitter front has been opened in the long battle between Brighton residents and BC.
"This is a tipping point," said Michael Pahre, who lives on Foster Street near the property and who blogs about BC's expansion plans. "It will be a staging ground for more expansion on this side of Commonwealth Avenue, and it will drive people out of the neighborhood."
Residents said their experiences with unruly students walk ing through their neighborhood -- trashed lawns, trampled gardens, smashed windows, and snapped car antennas -- make them recoil at the prospect of living beside more of them.
BC reached an agreement with church leaders last month to purchase the 18 remaining acres of the archdiocesan property for $65 million, the last of several purchases by BC in the past few years. BC officials say the acquisition will help them remake a crowded urban campus and provide space to build dormitories and athletic and academic facilities.
"It will take us to another level," said Thomas Keady Jr., BC's vice president for governmental and community affairs. Keady said the dormitories would reduce the number of off-campus parties that frustrate residents. Dormitories are well monitored, and students who live on campus are typically well behaved, he said.
"If we build 600 beds on the property, that will take 600 kids out of the Allston-Brighton community," he said.
As part of a master plan for its campus, Boston College wants to build dormitories for 600 students; the new dorms would make it possible for BC to provide housing for nearly all of its roughly 9,000 undergraduates.
The plan also calls for building athletic fields and an athletic facility with offices and a parking garage. School officials have also discussed whether to build a walkway over Commonwealth Avenue to bridge the two sides of campus. The archdiocese plans to retain St. John's Seminary.
BC has been discussing its plans with the Boston Redevelopment Authority and various neighborhood groups for the past few months and plans to file its master plan with the authority this summer, a city requirement.
Keady said the college is trying to assure residents it is a good neighbor and is meeting with them regularly to hear and address their concerns.
"There's a trust factor here," he said. "But what we don't want is people selling their homes."
Neighbors are unconvinced. They say the expansion will mean more property destruction and lawns littered with beer cans.
Alessandro Selvig, a Lake Street resident, was so angered by BC's proposal that he is running for the Brighton City Council seat to try to stop it. The election is in the fall.
"It will destroy the neighborhood," Selvig said. "If there are dorms across the street, I don't want to live here."
Neighbors said they recognize the university's right to develop the property, but insist that academic or administrative buildings are more appropriate for a residential neighborhood.
William F. Galvin, secretary of the Commonwealth, who has lived on Lake Street for 25 years, said he sometimes loses sleep because students are yelling and banging on street signs on their way home. It is enough of a problem that BC should refrain from putting dorms next to families, he said.
"I can time the closing of every saloon in Oak Square from the parade down the street," he said. "This plan would be a disaster for neighbors."
BC students said that they resent being branded as drunken louts and that most of their revelry is harmless.
"You get some kids late night, drunk, singing 'Sweet Caroline' on the way home. How harmful is that, honestly?" asked Patrick Fouhy, a junior and editor in chief of BC's student newspaper, The Heights. "If you choose to live there, you have to expect it's not a perfectly quiet area. You knew that coming in."
Neighbors said BC's plans fundamentally change the equation.
"People said, 'You knew there was a college over there when you moved here,' " said Sandy Furman, who lives on Lane Park. "But we didn't know there was going to be a college over here."
Many colleges in the Boston area have encountered resistance when they look to grow. Suffolk University, for example, had hoped to build a 22-story dormitory at the edge of Beacon Hill, but neighbors' objections forced them to relocate the project to Downtown Crossing.
The outcry is fairly predictable, an observer said.
"Any time a large, undeveloped tract changes hands in a dense, urban area, people are going to be concerned," said David Luberoff, executive director of Harvard's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.