Re: Hayward Place
Sicilian is dead right on this.
For another smaller-scale example (not to stray too far from Hayward Place, but it's a few blocks away) take 212 Stuart Street, the former Jae's Restaurant.
This was sold by Jae Chung to Ceres Realty at the very end of '04 for $2.5 MM. The developer, Ceres, then engaged in negotiations with the BRA to get substantial relief from the "as of right" zoning to permit a 13 story plus mechanicals condo building on the site and a vacant neighboring parcel for which they had a purchase agreement. The Bay Village Neighborhood Association tried to influence both the scale and design of the project, to little avail. With respect to scale, neighborhood leadership was told by BRA personnel, off the record, that it wasn't going to be less than 13 stories as any development would be "uneconomic." (Because this is a so-called "urban renewal" zone, the BRA can basically re-write zoning however they wish). And after the developer at first made positive noises about some design concessions that the neighborhood wanted, these were quietly stripped away after review by the BRA ... with the final renders looking like the usual Kairos Shen value-engineered, prefab box.
Neighborhood residents pointed out at public meetings that the developer had zero track record of residential development. The developer had a track record of commercial development, and a track record of flipping, but no project remotely similar to the project proposed. And the developer was coy on this topic when pushed at meetings - with the BRA in it's usual role as Greek chorus in favor of whatever is put forward.
Sure enough, after the paperwork was pushed through, two years later, Ceres flipped the property for $6.5 Million. (All figures available on line at Suffolk Registry, FWIW). And it sits vacant today.
This is what gets people in the neighborhoods worked up against the BRA and which breeds NIMBY-ism. If it were simply a matter of Jae, a restauranteur known personally to many in the neighborhood, selling his building for $6.5 MM and having the development stall because of the recession, that wouldn't provoke ire. But instead, a politically-connected development team triples their investment, less the cost of some vague drawings and some paperwork, without so much as turning a shovel. Heck, if neighborhood residents had known at the outset that triple the as-of-right zoning was on offer, we all could and would have chipped in to buy Jae out ourselves! But of course it doesn't work that way ... a group unfamiliar to the BRA would simply be pointed to the existing zoning and told to lump it.
