South Boston Infill and Small Developments

schwein · Aug 4, 2015

well in the case of the car parked on the side walk.. that's probably not the best idea but its also not as big of an issue as if it were parked on a sidewalk that was blocking anything but a construction dumpster... the portajohn is also part of life of a construction site, new construction/renovation? Your going to get portajohns.

jass · Aug 4, 2015

stellarfun said:
My two cents:

The bottom photo, the 'sidewalk' may not be a public way, and, if not, likely not subject to ADA. (The 'street' actually looks more like an alley.)

In the top photo, the building was probably grandfathered to the original lot lines. If the city wanted a wider sidewalk, they'd have to do a taking.

1) I dont think this is true at all. Private ways are still subject to ADA if they are publicly accessible or multifamily, which that is

2) Its impossible tot ell from here, but the space between the light pole and the building looks too narrow for a wheelchair

ParkerChris · Sep 17, 2015

98 A Street (my diner / Williams tavern) recently sold. Rumor is that the Developer is hoping to build a 10-story condo building, and based on location I would assume retail at street level.

If those assumptions hold, A street now has 5 projects on the books towards the Broadway end with street level retail (98 A, 45 West 3rd, artist for humanity, Allele Phase 2, 69-99A).

JohnAKeith · Sep 17, 2015

Southie is the new Southie.

DigitalSciGuy · Sep 18, 2015

Oooh, exciting. Now if we can get it in by 2017 and with less than a .25/unit parking ratio...

Suffolk 83 · Sep 18, 2015

^ I understand this comment and I generally agree with it, but Southie doesn't have very good public transportation unless you live on top of broadway or andrew. I would say large swaths of Southie are in a dead zone as far as the T and parking is awful there so I can't say I blame nimbys and developers for wanting/needing parking. I know I'm in no rush to have to take a regular bus everyday (I live on the silverline but that's different)

ParkerChris · Sep 18, 2015

Suffolk 83 said:
^ I understand this comment and I generally agree with it, but Southie doesn't have very good public transportation unless you live on top of broadway or andrew. I would say large swaths of Southie are in a dead zone as far as the T and parking is awful there so I can't say I blame nimbys and developers for wanting/needing parking. I know I'm in no rush to have to take a regular bus everyday (I live on the silverline but that's different)

The projects mentioned are all within 0.1 miles of Broadway station, and yet parking complains have already begun. It is a bit ridiculous. You don't solve congestion problems with increased parking.

George_Apley · Sep 18, 2015

ParkerChris said:
The projects mentioned are all within 0.1 miles of Broadway station, and yet parking complains have already begun. It is a bit ridiculous. You don't solve congestion problems with increased parking.

The refrain from neighbors is always that folks who move into parking-less buildings still bring their cars, but park them in the infinitely scarce street parking. I don't know if I really dispute that... I'd be interested to see some sort of survey done of people who live in buildings without parking.

DigitalSciGuy · Sep 19, 2015

Suffolk 83 said:
^ I understand this comment and I generally agree with it, but Southie doesn't have very good public transportation unless you live on top of broadway or andrew. I would say large swaths of Southie are in a dead zone as far as the T and parking is awful there so I can't say I blame nimbys and developers for wanting/needing parking. I know I'm in no rush to have to take a regular bus everyday (I live on the silverline but that's different)

98 A Street is literally a 3-4 min walk to the nearest Broadway station portal, so I think this practically qualifies as being 'on top of' Broadway station.

BussesAin'tTrains said:
The refrain from neighbors is always that folks who move into parking-less buildings still bring their cars, but park them in the infinitely scarce street parking. I don't know if I really dispute that... I'd be interested to see some sort of survey done of people who live in buildings without parking.

Yeah, this is why we need a city-wide parking management plan. We can't be fighting parking on this notion on which we only have anecdotal evidence to push developers toward real costs of including massive amounts of off-street parking and continuing to make driving the attractive option in Boston.

We already have empirical evidence that the volume of registered vehicles has significantly decreased while population has increased. We can skip the unnecessary task of measuring the number of out-of-state cars that park on our streets and jump right to a resident parking program. If you live in one of these no-parking buildings within a 10-min walk to rapid transit, you don't get a resident parking pass, but you might get a transit pass subsidised by the management company. Give the resident parking program some teeth with effective enforcement with random off-hours blitzes and just be done with it. There's no good reason to argue about parking on a project-by-project basis beyond the overblown man-on-the-street perspective on the parking 'crisis'.

ParkerChris said:
The projects mentioned are all within 0.1 miles of Broadway station, and yet parking complains have already begun. It is a bit ridiculous. You don't solve congestion problems with increased parking.

Yes.

Shepard · Sep 19, 2015

ParkerChris said:
You don't solve congestion problems with increased parking.

Yeah, okay, whatever you say there, "Parker" Chris. Jesus.

sm89 · Sep 19, 2015

I think it's because the long time residents have always had cars and didn't have an issue finding a spot in the past. They don't understand that a lot of the people moving to Southie now are choosing to not have cars. It doesn't make sense to them to depend on the transit, biking or walking in a neighborhood where they've always had a car as a convenience.

HalcyonEra · Sep 19, 2015

sm89 said:
I think it's because the long time residents have always had cars and didn't have an issue finding a spot in the past. They don't understand that a lot of the people moving to Southie now are choosing to not have cars. It doesn't make sense to them to depend on the transit, biking or walking in a neighborhood where they've always had a car as a convenience.

I don't think it's so much that the long time residents did not have issues with parking, they always did. Ask any old fireman about trying to traverse through Southie in the winter and they will tell you the issues with parking during the winter always existed, they just get a lot more publicity these days.

However, as an insular neighborhood where literally everyone knew everyone, they were able to make it work. The gentrification of the neighborhood has eliminated that luxury. IMO, the anti-car sentiment is quite misguided as people must have the ability to commute to jobs no matter where they live, and public transit simply does not go everywhere the jobs are.

This isn't your parents life, where they worked for the same company for 40 years and were therefore able to settle close to their work. The reality is that you may sign a one year lease with every intent of using mass transit or biking to get to work, only to find yourself out of job a week later and then finding your next opportunity in the suburbs. That said, I would suspect that the locals would suggest that you never should have moved there in first place.

George_Apley · Sep 19, 2015

DigitalSciGuy said:
Yeah, this is why we need a city-wide parking management plan. We can't be fighting parking on this notion on which we only have anecdotal evidence to push developers toward real costs of including massive amounts of off-street parking and continuing to make driving the attractive option in Boston.

We already have empirical evidence that the volume of registered vehicles has significantly decreased while population has increased. We can skip the unnecessary task of measuring the number of out-of-state cars that park on our streets and jump right to a resident parking program. If you live in one of these no-parking buildings within a 10-min walk to rapid transit, you don't get a resident parking pass, but you might get a transit pass subsidised by the management company. Give the resident parking program some teeth with effective enforcement with random off-hours blitzes and just be done with it. There's no good reason to argue about parking on a project-by-project basis beyond the overblown man-on-the-street perspective on the parking 'crisis'.

Definitely agree that the city needs to massively reform its ridiculous "here have a parking pass!" policy.

HalcyonEra said:
I don't think it's so much that the long time residents did not have issues with parking, they always did. Ask any old fireman about trying to traverse through Southie in the winter and they will tell you the issues with parking during the winter always existed, they just get a lot more publicity these days.

However, as an insular neighborhood where literally everyone knew everyone, they were able to make it work. The gentrification of the neighborhood has eliminated that luxury. IMO, the anti-car sentiment is quite misguided as people must have the ability to commute to jobs no matter where they live, and public transit simply does not go everywhere the jobs are.

This isn't your parents life, where they worked for the same company for 40 years and were therefore able to settle close to their work. The reality is that you may sign a one year lease with every intent of using mass transit or biking to get to work, only to find yourself out of job a week later and then finding your next opportunity in the suburbs. That said, I would suspect that the locals would suggest that you never should have moved there in first place.

This is an important point, and one that I have some nostalgic sympathy for. Neighborhood communities have been broken down by the transient direction our working economy has moved toward. It used to be that the street spot in front of your house was yours. You knew it, your neighbors knew it, the local beat cops knew it. People knew when you'd be there and when you wouldn't be; when someone could park there and when someone had to gtfo. It wasn't all harmony, rainbows and unicorns, but there was generally more community buy-in to maintaining neighborly relationships.

I don't think it was ever realistic for that model to last the revolution of city living that's happened in the first 15 years of the 21st century. The economic and housing model has totally changed. Communities aren't remotely as static as they were in the late-20th Century. But for the old townies, it's a jarring adjustment to reality that they understandably resist. Doesn't make it any less frustrating for urban progressives like most of us... but it's not incomprehensible.