Resignation Letter
The heroism of one IAG member's defiance of the Men & Women In Black responsible for this project must never be forgotten.....
Dear Mayor Walsh:
Please accept this communication as my formal resignation from the Impact Advisory Group for the above proposed project. I have attempted several times through various channels to meet with you at your convenience to explain why I am taking this step, but have not had any success.
I do this with no small amount of disappointment and sadness about how this proposal and BRA review has unfolded. In the capacity of an “advisor” selected to give input/feedback to the BRA and developer, I thought what I and my fellow IAG members (and indeed my neighbors) had to say was important enough to be truly considered, with a positive result for all. I was happy to spend the hours and hours needed over the past five years to achieve this goal. Instead, here is what we have endured:
A 2011 PNF in which we received a proposed design so out of synch with our neighborhood and its Urban Renewal Plan that it needed significant zoning relief to even be considered. I guess this is the way most of these things start out — the developer presents more than they actually want to build and then pretend to shave it down for the supposed benefit of the neighborhood.
Shortly after, we were shown several alternatives by the developer, Equity Residential, that were again so out of scale that each required significant zoning relief. And none of the alternatives substantially even considered IAG input and hundreds of residents’ comment letters about the original design’s significant massing, size, affordable housing or traffic issues.
Then a scoping determination and DPIR were done, after which all went silent for the next two years. The IAG could never learn what, if anything, was transpiring and had the foolish hope that no news was good news.
Finally in October 2014, with no heads up from the BRA, we received a Notice of Project Change (the first of two). Once more, we were presented with another, even higher single tower. The NPC proposal was so massive that, like the others before, it STILL required significant zoning relief since it didn’t conform to either the PDA or Urban Renewal Plan’s underlying zoning. But the BRA charged ahead and had the zoning commission approve spot zoning changes to allow this proposed design. And they did it without noticing the IAG or abutters except in a Boston Herald notice that never even mentioned the West End or the Garden Garage proposal. So we had no chance to take time off from our real jobs and speak at the hearing. How transparent is that??
To add insult to injury, and this is very personal for me, one of the developer’s representatives wrote an email to my employer attempting to get me fired for making written remarks about the project. The allegations were harassing, intimidating, and resulted in great personal embarrassment for me with my employer in addition to the concern that I could lose my job. I wrote apologies to my management, and when a newspaper article about the incident was published, it was widely circulated at my place of employment. You certainly can imagine how horrible this was for me. Although the BRA raised objections to the developer and demanded they do something, the developer refused to dismiss their representative and he remains, to this day, gainfully employed by Equity Residential behind the scenes. How is that for any real accountability?? (And please note I am writing this letter on my own personal time.)
[TOSH: HAHA]
In order to duly follow the guidelines outlined in a real Article 80 process, we attempted to meet deadlines imposed throughout this process at most inconvenient times, and before Christmas 2014, we managed a letter-writing campaign in our neighborhood. More than 650 residents took the time to submit letters objecting to the current design and asking the BRA to work with us and the developer for something that fit the neighborhood and your own workforce housing goals.
As a result, Jerome Smith and Brian Golden were gracious to meet with us to discuss the comments in the letters, the project itself and the zoning approval fiasco. We were promised a more extensive process and afterward, the Director of Development wrote us that the BRA would not recommend the project and was going to issue a PAD and require an FPIR from the developer. The stated intent was that Equity would come back with a more reasonable design that we could all work with. We were foolish enough once again to hope we had a chance for a real say about what would happen in our beloved neighborhood.
And finally, here we are now in late 2015. The PAD and FPIR have never materialized, all our comment letters have never been either acknowledged or answered (including a letter from the Hawthorne Place attorney), and we were just told there would be no PAD or FPIR. Instead, what we have now been given is a second NPC, and there are once again no material changes!! It is still too massive, requires significant zoning relief, and the BRA says you, our Mayor, like the design and want to move it forward!
In essence, we are being told that regardless of the five years of unpaid sweat equity by countless neighbors and the IAG, it just does not matter, this is moving forward. While the BRA will wait for comment letters, they are due on December 7th, conveniently (for the BRA and developer) right in between Thanksgiving and Christmas — does this sound familiar? After that, the BRA will “decide” if it will go to the December BRA Board meeting for project approval. WHAT A PROCESS — WHERE IS THE ULTIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY??
Mr. Mayor, that is it in a rather large nutshell. I wanted to tell you this personally and implore you to consider what we are saying — we know our neighborhood best. We know also that it is possible to design a development we can all be proud of and that meets your goals, our goals, and makes the developer its healthy profit. I truly hope you will read this email and understand why I am resigning from this process. I would be so pleased if you cared enough to get me back at the IAG table with the promise of a reasonably designed development for our neighborhood and our residents.
Thank you.
Respectfully,
Kathleen M. Ryan
On exhibit: the inner workings of (one) of the tortured souls who removed 395 units from Huntington Avenue in Mission Hill, incl (very likely) >100 affordable units at 45 Worthington Street--by killing the project outright, and a potential windfall of future tax revenue--(a transformative opportunity for people of lesser means to make better choices where to live was denied), contributing another sad chapter in our never ending Housing Crisis.