Here, Density May Work
On Chinatown site's future, a clash over priorities
By Sam Allis
Globe Columnist / April 27, 2008
Nothing captures the conflicts in Chinatown today better than the saga of the old Dainty Dot Hosiery building at 120 Kingston St.
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It's the one that, depending on perspective, is either on the edge of Chinatown or the front of the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The one whose application for historic landmark status was rejected last year by the Boston Landmarks Commission. The one preservationists crave to keep.
The one that Israeli developer Ori Ron plans to replace with a high-end condo maybe 26 stories high. The one that, Ron promises, will lead to 48 units of affordable housing he will pay for nearby.
At play here is the familiar calculus of old cities: the trading of density and height for affordable housing.
At issue are ineffables like neighborhood character against the realities of urban design, which to most smarties I know means serious density in the heart of a city.
"No project is all positive," says Sam Yoon, an at-large city councilor and an expert on housing and development in Chinatown from his years working for the Asian Community Development Corporation there. "We're not making new land in Boston. We can't stagnate. But the community was here first and should know very clearly the balance of the project."
It does. Yoon states the obvious here, yet refuses to take a stand on the Dainty Dot. "I'm not drafting a letter of support or opposition," he says. (I find this typical of him. Sam: show me some fortitude. Take a position. Either way, you'll get scars, but we're defined by our scars. That's politics.)
Ron, by all accounts, did his homework. He showed up at neighborhood meetings and has met with every community group in Chinatown he could find. "He knocked on every door," says Yoon.
The issue of height should be resolved in a few weeks through final negotiations with the Boston Redevelopment Authority. With that, says Ron, will come agreement on other issues as well. Still an open question, for example, is the fate of the street-level facade of Dainty Dot.
"I will yield to whatever the neighborhood consensus will be," vows Ron.
There's a lot of support for the project, from Mayor Menino to a roster of neighborhood organizations in Chinatown. Preservationists and other opponents, meanwhile, are livid. Stephanie Fan, a longtime activist who was born above her father's printing shop in Chinatown, fumes for all the obvious reasons.
"It's three times what it's zoned for," she says, referring to the 29 stories Ron first proposed. "That's what I find outrageous." She adds that her fight is less with Ron than the way the city blithely blows past zoning laws.
Fan and I eyeballed the Dainty Dot last week. She finds architectural merit I confess I'm unable to see. It's got some wonderful flourishes, but the Landmarks Commission got it right.
Fan, who now lives in Brookline, wears many hats, and one of them is a leading force behind the Chinese Historical Society of New England, a tiny outfit with a big name, located in a cramped office in the bowels of the China Trade Center on lower Boylston Street. (That is one of Boston's truly weird buildings.)
Fan and other volunteers labor on a shoestring to document and preserve the rich history of the neighborhood. It's not easy. Attention is elsewhere and old residents who carry important memories are dying.
Ron's tower will shatter the neighborhood skyline, no question about it. But then so did the John Hancock tower in Copley Square more than 30 years ago. It was opposed by an army of preservationists, most of whom later admitted they had been wrong. Still, that's thin gruel to those in the nearby Leather District who fear that someone else will put up a Ron-like structure in their midst.
This tower is a different animal - a Greenway structure rather than a Chinatown fixture. It will be a Greenway anchor, and its neighbors will be the likes of the State Street Financial Center. It will not be another office high-rise teeming with proles wearing ID badges, though, but rather pricey housing, full of people, families, and dogs.
The plot thickens. Developer Ron Druker owns a building that covers a small block directly west of the Dainty Dot.
He's got a couple of cool stores in it - Studio Verticale and Vessel - which gives Fan hope he just might keep the place funky.
Druker will wait to see what happens across the street before he does anything. It's safe to say he will build something, sometime. That's what developers do.
Dainty Dot opponents worry if the Ron project works, Druker will want a tower of his own. I wouldn't bet against it, but then Druker has a history of being sensitive to local concerns.
Chinatown is in play as never before. I see the Archstone Boston Common on Washington, where a 560-square-foot studio rental starts at $2,825, according to its website. There's the huge hole across the street where the Kensington Place, another big housing play, is supposed to go.
"Who was to know 150 years ago that we'd be sitting on prime real estate today?" asks Fan. Indeed. And for some, the damage to the sense of community is as steep as the price of land.
For better or worse - and I say better - density has gained purchase in this town.
There's good density and bad density. This one just might be OK.
Sam Allis can be reached at
allis@globe.com
? Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
