Never happen. Dedham sends troops to the border every time somebody even mentions putting something on Yard 5. Hell, they send troops to the border every time somebody mentions putting something on the ex-Stop & Shop Warehouse moonscape that isn't even near their nearest residents. The city line splitting the property and any talk of egresses or so much as one blade of landscaped grass or one pebble of asphalt parking reaching across the border has killed umpteen development proposals. Menino spent years of futility trying to force-fit Meninotowers on those parcels, until the remote location and complete anti-cooperation from Dedham had each semi-interested developer washing their hands of it.
Light industrial is a step in the right direction on optimal land-use given the remoteness of Yard 5 from Cleary Sq., but this just looks like a repackaging of the same thing the BRA pitched before with tweaked zoning. The resistance from Dedham is going to be even more violent, and the result likely the same. I don't blame the BRA for trying, but can't imagine they're exactly going at this with gusto given what wasted energy it's 95% likely to be.
Ideally, development in the area ought to unfold like this:
-- The T gets full-tilt BRA and city effort to clear out all the private biz in Widett Circle (already trying with the cold storage warehouse, and Boston Food Market would be a good fit for relocation to Marine Terminal) and give the T 50 years worth of expansion space right at ground zero of southside rail ops and downtown bus ops.
-- The T land-swaps Readville Yard 2 and the adjacent parcel it leases to the recycling yard to the BRA. 2, by its location, is going to fetch them much better resale value than 5's remote location straddling the city line, despite 5's higher total acreage.
-- Commuter rail facility relocates to Widett (which is >2x the size). Fairmount & Stoughton layover moves to Yard (1?), those 4 tracks on the Fairmount mainline a couple hundred feet north of the Fairmount-side station platform that aren't used at all except for CSX reserving one track for its backup moves in/out of the southerly freight yard from the Franklin Line.
-- Yard 2 gets redeveloped as contiguous northward expansion of Cleary Sq. where it's totally integrated with the neighborhood and spurs more redev on that scuzzy stretch of Hyde Park Ave.
-- Yard 5 gets retained by the T as a long-term hold, like today. Because it's zoned RR the pitchfork-wielding Dedham mob can't Operation Chaos transit use like it can redev-with-zoning-change. Technically it IS an active yard, though it's not used for much of anything except staging rail and ties for track construction projects. About the worst Dedham can do is demand a soundwall if it were to see any substantially escalated transit use. Plunk a bus maint yard next to the school bus yard or something to replace Forest Hills bus yard. It's the ideal location to store and service smelly diesel-burning things, and it's larger in total acreage than BET on the northside so whatever needs a cleared-out Widett doesn't serve them for the next 50 years, Yard 5 will serve for the 50 after that. There's no risk of them selling out their future if they dish off Yard 2 and retain 5.
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