One Mystic | 1 Mystic Avenue | Charlestown

bpda.app.box.com

2023-02-27_Supplemental Filing_One Mystic Avenue.pdf | Powered by Box

bpda.app.box.com bpda.app.box.com

Supplemental Information Document. I encourage everyone to read the first chapter of this filing for its clear-stated rebuke of both the BPDA's initial skepticism of this project and a small minority of the Charlestown community's outright opposition. For the mayor's office, this project now has 20% affordable units and largely complies with the PLAN: Charlestown efforts underway. Bottom line:

"The proposal described in this filing thus includes 636 residential units on a single lot. That number represents, as noted above, 24% of the 2,647 net new housing units permitted across Boston in 2022. There is nowhere else in Boston where 636 residences can be created with lower impacts. This Project therefore deserves the highest priority for municipal review and approval."
 
I like these guys.... "If not here, then where?... The alternative to the thoughtful redevelopment of Sullivan Square is the status quo of junk yards, outdated and underperforming industrial sites, illegal trash dumping, and significantly underutilized transit assets."

Came out swinging- good on them. This project seems like a no brainer. Come on Wu - don't screw this one up.
 
SuffolkHeights11 said:
bpda.app.box.com

2023-02-27_Supplemental Filing_One Mystic Avenue.pdf | Powered by Box

bpda.app.box.com bpda.app.box.com

Supplemental Information Document. I encourage everyone to read the first chapter of this filing for its clear-stated rebuke of both the BPDA's initial skepticism of this project and a small minority of the Charlestown community's outright opposition. For the mayor's office, this project now has 20% affordable units and largely complies with the PLAN: Charlestown efforts underway. Bottom line:

"The proposal described in this filing thus includes 636 residential units on a single lot. That number represents, as noted above, 24% of the 2,647 net new housing units permitted across Boston in 2022. There is nowhere else in Boston where 636 residences can be created with lower impacts. This Project therefore deserves the highest priority for municipal review and approval."
Click to expand...

I suspect this wouldn't have been submitted if they hadn't worked things out with the BPDA staff, but the agency's thickheadedness with regard to this project has surprised me before. Seems like this is geared more toward getting expedited approval now than repudiating prior feedback.
 
Equilibria said:
I suspect this wouldn't have been submitted if they hadn't worked things out with the BPDA staff, but the agency's thickheadedness with regard to this project has surprised me before. Seems like this is geared more toward getting expedited approval now than repudiating prior feedback.
Click to expand...

I hope so but I read this section on page 13 as addressing some lingering efforts to cut this project down, whether from the BPDA or otherwise.

Shrinking the One Mystic Avenue Project would not reduce housing demand. Doing so would just leave the housing deficit to be made up somewhere else, almost certainly at a location further from the urban core. With development forced into less transit-friendly locations, households not able to live at the Project Site would have to drive further for work and other trips, thereby contributing to the congestion they long to escape. Worse yet, this approach would promote the continued bleeding away of the neighborhood’s long-term working-class residential base. As multi-million-dollar single family home prices increasingly become the local norm, Charlestown risks becoming an island of the wealthy within Boston – a veritable “Nantucket West.”

Only significant and rapid increases to the local housing stock can offset this accelerating and corrosive trend of concentrated, inequitable wealth and displacement. It is critical to blunt the displacement of long-time Charlestown families and their children who want to stay in the community where they were born. Reducing the scale of One Mystic Avenue would not result in any meaningful reduction in Project impacts. It would merely rob 168 households of the ability to live in Boston.
 
SuffolkHeights11 said:
I hope so but I read this section on page 13 as addressing some lingering efforts to cut this project down, whether from the BPDA or otherwise.

Shrinking the One Mystic Avenue Project would not reduce housing demand. Doing so would just leave the housing deficit to be made up somewhere else, almost certainly at a location further from the urban core. With development forced into less transit-friendly locations, households not able to live at the Project Site would have to drive further for work and other trips, thereby contributing to the congestion they long to escape. Worse yet, this approach would promote the continued bleeding away of the neighborhood’s long-term working-class residential base. As multi-million-dollar single family home prices increasingly become the local norm, Charlestown risks becoming an island of the wealthy within Boston – a veritable “Nantucket West.”

Only significant and rapid increases to the local housing stock can offset this accelerating and corrosive trend of concentrated, inequitable wealth and displacement. It is critical to blunt the displacement of long-time Charlestown families and their children who want to stay in the community where they were born. Reducing the scale of One Mystic Avenue would not result in any meaningful reduction in Project impacts. It would merely rob 168 households of the ability to live in Boston.
Click to expand...

I read that as being firmly directed at the neighborhood NIMBYs, in a way that will hurt. It's basically calling them rich snobs.
 
SuffolkHeights11 said:
bpda.app.box.com

2023-02-27_Supplemental Filing_One Mystic Avenue.pdf | Powered by Box

bpda.app.box.com bpda.app.box.com

Supplemental Information Document. I encourage everyone to read the first chapter of this filing for its clear-stated rebuke of both the BPDA's initial skepticism of this project and a small minority of the Charlestown community's outright opposition. For the mayor's office, this project now has 20% affordable units and largely complies with the PLAN: Charlestown efforts underway. Bottom line:

"The proposal described in this filing thus includes 636 residential units on a single lot. That number represents, as noted above, 24% of the 2,647 net new housing units permitted across Boston in 2022. There is nowhere else in Boston where 636 residences can be created with lower impacts. This Project therefore deserves the highest priority for municipal review and approval."
Click to expand...

This whole thing needs a NSFW tag - it is urbanist pornography. What 50 shades of grey was for women over 40, this is for me.

So refreshing to see a development project not be deferential to absurd claims and say what we are all thinking.
 
Brandeisian said:
So refreshing to see a development project not be deferential to absurd claims and say what we are all thinking.
Click to expand...

Smart move for the developer to go on the offensive. Wu will look like a hypocrit if this gets rejected or trimmed especially while pumping out rhetoric about housing supply and costs while at the same time doing almost nothing so far to encourage development.
 
393b40 said:
Smart move for the developer to go on the offensive. Wu will look like a hypocrit if this gets rejected or trimmed especially while pumping out rhetoric about housing supply and costs while at the same time doing almost nothing so far to encourage development.
Click to expand...

I mean, it's pretty easy to make her look like a hypocrite - ask her about the Chiofaro project.
 
king_vibe said:
I can’t get over that number. The city with the largest biotech industry in the entire fucking world and no interest in turning any of that into new residents.
Click to expand...

Easy, there are already too many people here.
 
Justbuildit said:
Could you imagine how TERRIBLE this place would be if it had, like, 800,000 people?! Can’t imagine a world where that could ever be possible. Better not take any steps to allow Boston to reach that fantastical human density.
Click to expand...

It didn't seem to cripple the city back in 1950 (801,444); I'd love for it to get back to that level.
 
chrisbrat said:
It didn't seem to cripple the city back in 1950 (801,444); I'd love for it to get back to that level.
Click to expand...
75 years ago there were significantly fewer households, and minimal resident student population. The average household size in 1950 was 3.4 people; in 2020, it was about 2.4 people.

In 1950, Boston had 134,000 school age children, ages 5-17. In 2020, about 87,000. (<< halving the age 15-19 cohort).
 
stellarfun said:
75 years ago there were significantly fewer households, and minimal resident student population. The average household size in 1950 was 3.4 people; in 2020, it was about 2.4 people.

In 1950, Boston had 134,000 school age children, ages 5-17. In 2020, about 87,000. (<< halving the age 15-19 cohort).
Click to expand...

More interesting than people per household to me is cars per household. Anyone have that data for 1950 and 2023?
 
stellarfun said:
75 years ago there were significantly fewer households, and minimal resident student population. The average household size in 1950 was 3.4 people; in 2020, it was about 2.4 people.

In 1950, Boston had 134,000 school age children, ages 5-17. In 2020, about 87,000. (<< halving the age 15-19 cohort).
Click to expand...

All the more reason to support building more housing to get back to those glory days! Throw in more 3-4 bedroom units so we can get that household size back up, too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top