Re: Longfellow Place (née Garden Garage Towers) | 35 Lomasney Way | West End
The West End hyperbole crew might have actually improved the project scope. I couldn't help peruse the comment letters after meddlepal jogged my interest, but the "institutional" complaints (i.e. Amy Lowell Residents' Assoc.) certainly demanded less parking and they did note that Equity's height demands were based in part on recouping underground parking garage construction costs. Now, I'm reasonably sure that ALRA et al were using that tactic to try and scale the height down and thankfully they seemed to have mostly failed in that mission...but, hey, credit where credit is due, they did manage to convince Equity to ditch parking spots on site within a Shaq freethrow of the second-most significant multimodal node in New England. I'll fucking take that outcome any day of the week.
I have no idea what exactly the various resident associations' goals were other than their opposition based on a thorough review of available statistics and resultant trends over time...........okay fine, based on their opposition to Equity's dog park public benefit idea, their SHOCK and DISAPPOINTMENT that the BRA even contemplated such a project that would terrify any reasonable abutters, and their DEMAND for better treatments weren't met (emphasis not mine...). It's always a bit hard to tell if they're altruistic in their push for more on-site affordable housing or they're just Carlone-ing and using that as a way to kill the project's economy and thus the developer's interest. I'll err on the side of generosity. Seriously though, the letters are fun read.
But, let's call a spade a spade - all this opposition might just have worked out in an odd way. And that's no small feat - the "new" West End was after-all planned and development by a mall architect who sought to limit the intrusion of automobiles into the West End's streets and isolate the "urban villages" (makes about as much sense as a "small A380") from the surrounding area. The area as designed and, clearly, as understood by the resident orgs (they reference the 1957 West End Urban Renewal Plan zoning regs a bunch in their complaints as in "this project does not conform to the 1957....therefore it should not be built), prevents this sort of development. So, let's hope the zoning board doesn't strip it down (too much), but this was always going to be a struggle.
