Roxbury Infill and Small Developments

[Max Power]

The Urbanica building pictured above technically is in Fort Hill, and Fort Hill leads down to Dudley. With some of the best housing stock in the entire city (certainly much better than Dorchester 3-deckers), and with the institutions nearby (hospitals, Northeastern + other colleges), there is a better foundation for high end rentals in Roxbury than in Dorchester. Even Dot is ahead for now, that won't last long. It's just soaking-up the finance bro run-off from Southie...

the claim that dot's housing stock is worse than rox's is dubious at best. if you said southie, I'd start to agree but dot's is much more mixed, and actually similar to rox

don't take my words as an affront toward rox, btw... my overall point was just saying I have little faith in the powers that be to properly develop the Dudley area correctly.

yeah. fort hill, and I guess the area south of egleston will definitely see improvements - the type of small scale stuff that really adds value to a neighborhood.

 

[Max Power]

The one thing I disagree with is the fate of the rest of Roxbury Highlands other than Fort Hill. The unspoilt part of Warren, Elm and Walnut, not to mention the neighborhood immediately west of Dudley St, all have streets loaded with grand old Victorian homes. Many are abandoned or in rough shape, but are prime for redevelopment/renovation by young people priced out of JP. Crime remains a problem and the large housing developments on both sides of MLK will scare off a lot of people, but overall these neighborhoods are in much better shape than even five years ago.... Blue Hill Ave at night used to be just loaded with crack sellers and prostitutes, the last two years, startlingly fewer. While new construction on the vacant lots will indeed likely get pushback from a gentrification-fearing community, they wont be able to prevent individual properties from getting sold off and cleaned up by newcomers. And this is where it's more likely for there to be "good" infill. Or so I hope.

Oh definitely, my points earlier are specifically towards the Dudley station area.

the rest of Roxbury eventually will see the same type of small scale investment that's mentioned above. there's a lot of solid housing stock there that's going to get snatched up quick.

-but not for a while. three reasons: 1. crime is never a stranger, and while improving bha, warren, Dudley st, and Columbia are still gang infested. and there's projects. that doesn't help. 2. transportation. taking a shitty bus to transfer to Dudley or ruggles sucks. trying to drive and get on a highway sucks and 3. retail and entertainment... it's far. nothing's really within crawling/wallbanging distance. but a time will come when prices in other areas get too expensive- and I do think that this will start to push inwards towards the heart of rox. those new liquor licenses will help add dining establishments to the area, and put it more on the map.

 

[underground]

I don't disagree. I meant "crying out" in the sense that the Dudley area has a lot of great bones surrounded by empty parcels that urbanistically, would really benefit from the type of infill going in around Broadway and Andrew Square. In terms of timeline, yeah, not "crying out" in the sense that there's a lot of economic pressure to build now. Real or perceived, Dudley Square and Roxbury in general has a reputation that other booming neighborhoods don't.

 

[Savin Hill]

Boston Housing Authority wants $30M to redevelop Roxbury site

The Boston Housing Authority has applied for a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to revitalize the Whittier Street public housing development in Roxbury.

The transformation plan is divided among four key areas: housing, neighborhood, people and jobs and economic opportunities. Here's a breakdown of those plan areas:

- Housing: A plan that will bring $300 million in new housing investment, replacing 200 units of deeply subsidized housing and adding 350 new units of moderate and market housing, totaling 550 new units of housing, to create a vibrant new mixed-income neighborhood which will not displace current residents.

- Neighborhood: A plan that is knitted into the broader Roxbury Master Plan, with targeted investment in infrastructure, public safety, walkability improvements, and community facilities that support and emphasize breaking the isolation of Whittier Street residents.

- People: A plan that addresses community transformation and opportunity and not just physical improvements, where the Whittier community is a connected community whose members enjoy a broad spectrum of quality programs and services, and have tangible pathways to educational and economic opportunity.

- Jobs and Economic Opportunities: A Project Labor Agreement that will create hundreds of good-paying union construction jobs as well as increased opportunities for public housing and low-income residents to enter into the Building Pathways program, which provides pre-apprenticeship training and guaranteed placement within the building trades following graduation

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/r...housing-authority-wants-30m-to-redevelop.html

 

[datadyne007]

Fantastic news! I'd love to see them build up the streetwall that my studio buddies and I envisioned for our senior project!

 

[Matthew]

I was riding the bus to Ruggles on Saturday and noticed that there's an enormous fenced-off vacant lot adjacent to the Whittier Street development. This is right next to Ruggles Station, one of the busiest bus and subway nodes in New England. What a tremendous waste.

Whittier Street itself could use an update too, glad to see they're thinking about that. I don't know when it was built but it sure looks like the worst of the 1960s.

 

[whighlander]

Boston Housing Authority wants $30M to redevelop Roxbury site
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/r...housing-authority-wants-30m-to-redevelop.html

Jobs and Economic Opportunities: A Project Labor Agreement that will create hundreds of good-paying union construction jobs as well as increased opportunities for public housing and low-income residents to enter into the Building Pathways program, which provides pre-apprenticeship training and guaranteed placement within the building trades following graduation

Love the socialist hypocrisy

Open the bidding on the project to anyone with a track record of 1 year or so -- this one thing will employ many more of the local folks than any managed supply union apprenticeship program -- just the union fat-cats and their political syncophants will be upset

 

[FK4]

Re: Whittier

This is great news. Three thoughts:
- how can one advocate for this area's NOT being redesigned into cheap, suburban horridness like Mission Main was?
- really, all of Madison Park, INCLUDING Whittier St (separate, technically, I know) should have a long range plan to destroy the super block and rebuild a street grid in here. Whittier St could be step one of this process.
- they should at least think about factoring in the Urban Ring ROW as a possible alternative from Dudley -> Ruggles when they do this.

 

[FK4]

Puttin this in the Roxbury thread and people can fight over whether Egleston is Roxbury or Jamaica Plain. When white yuppies come in and push out all the black and Latino residents it will undoubtedly start being roundly marketed as the latter. Whatever. Here's a new proposal that hopefully will be good for the neighborhood without contributing to the assholification of the area:

http://baystatebanner.com/news/2015/feb/11/egleston-square-activists-grapple-areas-first-majo/

 

[coleslaw]

Puttin this in the Roxbury thread and people can fight over whether Egleston is Roxbury or Jamaica Plain. When white yuppies come in and push out all the black and Latino residents it will undoubtedly start being roundly marketed as the latter. Whatever. Here's a new proposal that hopefully will be good for the neighborhood without contributing to the assholification of the area:

http://baystatebanner.com/news/2015/feb/11/egleston-square-activists-grapple-areas-first-majo/

Egleston is the boarder. This side of it is solidly JP. source: living a couple blocks away. Also project seems great.

 

[sm89]

The official border is Columbus Ave and Atherton St, but the zip code boundary is what causes a lot of the confusion.

 

[bigeman312]

^starting your weekend early?

 

[whighlander]

Puttin this in the Roxbury thread and people can fight over whether Egleston is Roxbury or Jamaica Plain. When white yuppies come in and push out all the black and Latino residents it will undoubtedly start being roundly marketed as the latter. Whatever.

FK -- why do you think that the current mix is the final end stage of development

This place [Dudley] was once the home of the William Shirley Royal Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Supreme Military Commander of all of His Majesty's Forces in North America [built the house circa 1750] -- the uber of the uber

https://www.google.com/maps/place/3...m2!3m1!1s0x89e37a49b4915321:0x57924d6cbfef293
http://www.shirleyeustishouse.org/index.asp

http://www.shirleyeustishouse.org[u...920px-Shirley-Eustis_House.jpg[/img] [/QUOTE]

 

[FK4]

Egleston is the boarder. This side of it is solidly JP. source: living a couple blocks away. Also project seems great.

People have argued for decades whether or not Egleston is JP or Roxbury. Although without question there is a "JP side" of Egleston, but the territory itself and homes on each immediate side, as well as specifically where the line is a matter of debate amongst locals and always has been. There has not been an actual border since West Roxbury was absorbed in the 19th century. If you asked people west of the SWC prior to the embankment coming down, many would tell you that Roxbury began roughly where the embankment was. You can find your police district maps, neighborhood organization boundaries, trash collection boundaries, and the arbitrary lines Google makes up for each Boston neighborhood - all are different, all have changed over the years. It doesn't matter because there is no line because JP and Roxbury aren't political units. The borders between all Boston neighborhoods, possibly with the exception of the ones downtown, are really border zones rather than lines. It's fluid.

At any rate, what is called Roxbury by real estate agents, and by newcomers to the city who move to the border zones, has been steadily shrinking, and what is called JP is expanding. It's an unfortunate thing... The South End gets bigger, Mission Hill is now totally divorced from Roxbury, Fort Hill is just Fort Hill; even Roxbury Crossing is now just being called Mission Hill. Lower Roxbury is now the South End. The reasons are obvious and cynical. So yeah, Egleston is within the border zone and the west side will continue to become inevitably more part of JP as the influence of JP and the gentrification spreads uphill from the Orange Line. And in 20 years, it's likely that Egleston will be incontrovertibly planted in JP.

At any rate, a new project would be good for this area, but hopefully wil contribute positively. Paul Iontosca's projects are generally aimed for higher end people, but he has done some nice restorations of old homes in JP so will have to see. Im sure the neighborhood will fight it on account of the size. If you live locally, support it because this corridor is one place where some big buildings deserve to be built.

 

[FK4]

FK -- why do you think that the current mix is the final end stage of development

I was typing my other response as you posted this. There is no end stage, we are in agreement. While I think it a little absurd to think that JP can stay exactly the same (like all the people who protested Whole Foods) it does concern me that Boston housing is gentrifying much faster than new housing is built to absorb the people getting pushed out. Certainly, change happens - but in other periods, as the city grew, the suburbs did too. In an ideal world, as Boston's core expanded, Hyde Park would start looking like Roxbury and Roxbury like South End in terms of density. Or do we value the neighborhoods as they are? Do we bulldoze Milton to turn it into a West Roxbury? Who is going to give way? Or will Boston become a rich playground with urban poor restricted to Lynn and Brockton? We can't have our cake and eat it too.

 

[whighlander]

I was typing my other response as you posted this. There is no end stage, we are in agreement. While I think it a little absurd to think that JP can stay exactly the same (like all the people who protested Whole Foods) it does concern me that Boston housing is gentrifying much faster than new housing is built to absorb the people getting pushed out. Certainly, change happens - but in other periods, as the city grew, the suburbs did too. In an ideal world, as Boston's core expanded, Hyde Park would start looking like Roxbury and Roxbury like South End in terms of density. Or do we value the neighborhoods as they are? Do we bulldoze Milton to turn it into a West Roxbury? Who is going to give way? Or will Boston become a rich playground with urban poor restricted to Lynn and Brockton? We can't have our cake and eat it too.

FK -- When you look at the totality of it over the past decade plus Boston / Cambridge is developing more rapidly and is now somewhat decoupled from the outer city / suburbs in the Metro area [roughly I-495]

In turn the Boston Metro is growing much faster economically and its demographic in turn are somewhat decoupled from the rest of Massachusetts

However, beyond the growth of the population in raw numbers there is a dramatic change in the populace driven by the "Kendall Sq" evolution in types of employment. Kendallization requires a greater percentage of the working community to have advanced academic backgrounds and significant technical expertise -- the employment demographics of the Kendallized parts of the city more closely resemble Rt-128 in its heyday, than they do the traditional suburban commuters and some city residents who worked in Boston / Cambridge. While this process has been underway for a few decades -- it is now accelerating -- and this in turn means there is and will be a more rapid turn-over in the populace in Boston / Cambridge neighborhoods than just the usual effect of aging of the residents and the slow population growth.

In addition, the Financial District and the Back Bay are expanding beyond Finance and its support dominating activities into the Kendall Sq. Model. Many of these people are attracted to living in the city, and if they are priced out of the near-by housing, they will move into more peripheral neighborhoods.

Finally remember that outside of this time of the year, Dudley is imminently walkable to the Financial District, Back Bay and the Seaport Innovation District. Outside of recent phenomena, the T allows people living in Roxbury relatively easy connections to Seaport / Innovation and Kendall

 

[JohnAKeith]

Wow, I've never had a post deleted on me!

Fair enough.

 

[Savin Hill]

Suffolk Construction ditches South Boston move

Fish and his team ironed out a deal to expand next door. Suffolk’s officials said they signed an agreement last week to use a 99-year-lease to take control of a 56,000-square-foot property owned by Harbour Realty Trust at Magazine and Allerton streets. A small industrial building that houses an auto repair garage will be leveled to make way for Suffolk’s new wing.

Suffolk moved to Allerton Street in 1988, opening in a three-story building six years after the company was launched. It built a five-story addition in 2000, essentially doubling the size of the complex. The current project will take about three years to complete, including renovations to the existing space, Leary said.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...ury-instead/c1cyLAq6EkITH72VB8d2FP/story.html

 

[Kinopio]

I live two blocks from the 3200 Washington Street project and I like it. It is not displacing any residents. The dozen or so affordable units is a lot more than the 0 affordable units that are currently in that space. And the self storage building across the street from it is taller so its not like this new building wouldn't fit the neighborhood.

 

[jpdivola]

Looks like the type of project Boston needs all over the inner ring neighborhoods.

The big towers in DT and Back Bay are fun to watch going up. But, realistically they are just a drop in the housing shortage bucket. Central Boston is never going to be an affordable place again. It is going to be doughnut market like NYC and SF with market rate luxury and some token low income housing.

Smaller, less expensive low rise developments in the inner ring neighborhoods are where Boston's middle class housing crisis will be solved (or at least lessened). Now the politics will be tough as the neighborhoods shift from working class and disproportionality minority/immigrant to solidly middle class and whiter. But, that is already happening, regardless of if Boston builds or not. JP is the perfect example of that.

As self defeating as it is for the city as whole to oppose middle class housing, it isn't entirely irrational from the perspective of lower income people. No amount of new market rate housing will drive prices down enough to become affordable to a single mother with a service sector job or an undocumented immigrant working under the table. Better to just keep the neighborhood a little undesirable and hope the middle class yuppies go elsewhere.

Hopefully, Boston can find the happy medium that allows enough new housing to be created for the middle classes without displacing the lower classes. But, I'm not sure any city has perfected the mix. Part of the problem is that new development follows displacement (and doesn't really cause it). Generally prices on the existing units in a neighborhood have to rising before it becomes economical to build new market rate units. Not sure what the solution is to the problem? Some sort of mix of a robust market rate housing development policy coupled with subsidies for new affordable housing.