Mildred Hailey (Bromley Heath) BHA Redevelopment | Jackson Square | Jamaica Plain

It really makes me wonder what they were thinking putting these at diagonal angles to the grid, and like most post war public housing has no street grid, retail, and grass everywhere but no actual parks. It seems so obvious today that this is a horrible design. You see buildings in china that I would say are the closest in aesthetic to these, albeit much taller, but they integrate them into the street grid and put retail in the base and they work fine. The buildings themself arent inherently sooo terrible, besides the no retail, but the way they are positioned and clustered makes them so.

-Basically what Im saying is if these buildings were spread out, on the normal grid, and had ground floor retail they would have been pretty fine. Not amazing, but fine.
 
Construction Starts at Mildred C. Hailey Apartments
The first phase of the redevelopment will include 223 mixed-income homes, commercial space and a new Anna Mae Cole Community Center

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“May 12, 2023 – (Boston) –Construction is underway on the redevelopment of Mildred C. Hailey Apartments in Boston’s Jackson Square neighborhood. The groundbreaking celebration hosted by The Community Builders (TCB) and Boston Housing Authority (BHA) included officials from the Mayor’s Office of Housing, the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development (EOHED), MassHousing, Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation (CEDAC) and the Mildred C. Hailey tenant task force. The groundbreaking starts the first phase of the Centre Street Partners (CSP) collaboration, of TCB, Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC) and Urban Edge, designated by the BHA to redevelop a portion of the landmark public housing site.

The groundbreaking marks the beginning of construction for two six-story buildings which will be located at 2 and 6 Lamartine Street, once a new road is constructed as part of the project. The two new buildings will include 223 affordable and moderate-income apartments, a new Anna Mae Cole Community Center and ground floor commercial space…”

https://bostonhousing.org/en/News/Construction-Starts-at-Mildred-C-Hailey-Apartment.aspx



Most current renders:

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Buildings 2 and 3
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https://www.petersenengineering.com/project/mildred-c-hailey-apartments/

https://www.bostonplans.org/project.../mildred-hailey-development-buildings-2-and-3
 
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Still kind of tower-in-a-parkish, sadly, but an improvement nonetheless.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Not really. Some green space is needed to mitigate the density. Kids have to have a place to play and run around, and adults need some breathing room and greenery as well.
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I strongly question whether 30-foot patches of grass with a few flower beds effectively provide people with play space, breathing room, and greenery. Just build a traditional block with buildings that touch, and set aside a bigger, centrally located, plot for a real park.
 
BronsonShore said:
I strongly question whether 30-foot patches of grass with a few flower beds effectively provide people with play space, breathing room, and greenery. Just build a traditional block with buildings that touch, and set aside a bigger, centrally located, plot for a real park.
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I'm wondering how many people on this board grew up in a dense apartment complex with no greenery at all (except for the off-site park you mentioned)? Seems like it would be a fairly dystopian and bleak existence for a kid.
 
BronsonShore said:
Just build a traditional block with buildings that touch, and set aside a bigger, centrally located, plot for a real park.
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This complex is right up against the Southwest Corridor, so in a sense this was always destined to be “tower-in-the-park” -esque.
 
Since when do we qualify shoddy 5-over-1's as towers? I don't even think our standards were that low when Menino was running the show. We have normalized complete garbage as "wins" for the outer neighborhoods.
 
DZH22 said:
Since when do we qualify shoddy 5-over-1's as towers? I don't even think our standards were that low when Menino was running the show. We have normalized complete garbage as "wins" for the outer neighborhoods.
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Isn't this all about the funding realities? 5-over-1's are the lowest cost per square foot for this type of multi-family. Build a real tower and you get less units for the available bucks.
 
BronsonShore said:
Does these look dystopian and bleak to you?

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True story: My family moved into the Jefferson Park housing project in North Cambridge (off of Rindge Ave) when I was 4. The housing development was only a couple of years old at the time, and it was pretty nice: small fence-enclosed lawns in front of the stately brick apartment buildings, a large playground a couple of hundred feet away, a gigantic sandbox and play area right next to our building, trees planted here and there, a grassy back yard, and a city park 2 blocks away. Six apartments per doorway in the 3-story buildings. After a couple of years the trees (small saplings actually) had all been pulled down by the hundreds of kids living there. So, no more trees. Soon after, the small fence-enclosed lawns were paved over. Thankfully the grassy back yard remained. I felt really bad about the trees and the grass being gone in the front of the building, as that seemed to contribute to the hopeless feeling all around, and the downward spiral of vandalism and overall deterioration that ensued. And yes, it was a dystopian and bleak environment. I actually hated living there, and by the time we moved out when I was 16, it had turned into a real shithole, with the front door to the building all carved up, graffiti on the hallway walls, no plantings, no front yard, no trees, and litter blowing around and plugged up along the chain link fences.

So yes, amenities are important, grass is important, and trees are important. Open space for children to play in is important. .And yes, the photo you submitted is great for adults, but children? Where will they play? I do get a bit irritated at planners and people who grew up in nice suburban homes, cluelessly thinking that cramming low income families with children into dense blocks with next to nothing for amenities is just fine and dandy. It smacks a bit of elitism, or maybe just a lack of thought and awareness? I'm not blaming you. You make some good points. Density is great, but it has to keep in mind the needs of families.
 
Charlie_mta said:
Not really. Some green space is needed to mitigate the density. Kids have to have a place to play and run around, and adults need some breathing room and greenery as well.
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Yeah, I think this is is more "a park" than "towers in a park". The recreation area is well-defined.

It's interesting to me that in the inner Boston Area any green lawn in front of or around multifamily housing suggests "public housing project", but it does. Apartment and condo units for the more privileged don't tend to have lawns unless they're gated courtyards. Probably a combination of several things: the need to accommodate the residents' BMWs and Teslas, a concern that folks will be sleeping out there if they make it too nice, or just the fact that public housing is centrally-planned by do-gooders who like pedestrian paths while buildings for the wealthy are designed by developers out to make every buck.

There are exceptions like Cambridge Crossing, but not many.
 
I lived in Jackson Square for many years and it was a dump (a violent dump with gunfire often heard at night) when I moved in and a lot better when I moved out (ex. City Feed had just opened), but forward momentum has been slow in that neighborhood relative to other areas in the city. I am really happy to see this development happen, period.
 
Czervik.Construction said:
I lived in Jackson Square for many years and it was a dump (a violent dump with gunfire often heard at night) when I moved in and a lot better when I moved out (ex. City Feed had just opened), but forward momentum has been slow in that neighborhood relative to other areas in the city. I am really happy to see this development happen, period.
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I agree. It looks great.
 
bigeman312 said:
Based on this it looks like the newest update no longer includes through-traffic for automobiles on Lamartine St. Is this true? Does anyone have more information?
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Why would this development impact Lamartine, which is on the opposite side of Centre from Mildred Hailey?
 
Blackbird said:
Why would this development impact Lamartine, which is on the opposite side of Centre from Mildred Hailey?
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Because the previous iteration of the plan included a Lamartine St extension to Heath St. Look up thread and it’s in all of the renderings before the latest round.

lainpimicaja said:
If you look at slide 21 in that deck, they say that the originally proposed extension of Lamartine St north of Centre St is not going to be continuous due to BTD's concerns.
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Thanks! I don’t really have a horse in this race. I certainly see BTD’s reasoning, though. My gut reaction is that I might like the newer renderings better now without Lamartine providing a straight-shot for drivers from Mission Hill into Central JP.

I just found the difference glaring and had to inquire.
 
It's funny because an "extension" of Lamartine St would actually have been a restoration of it. It always bugged me that despite the street being removed decades ago when the development was built, they still used Lamartine St addresses within the development as if it still existed. And it's not like it was a pedestrian path instead, there was no clear through-route. Honestly surprised emergency response folks went along with it.
 
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