The Bon | 1260 Boylston Street | Fenway

BosDevelop said:
As an attorney, I can't help but wonder what legal force "try to avoid" has. Sounds highly subjective. "We did try hard to avoid leasing more than 25% of the units to undergads but our efforts were not successful." "try to avoid" = worthless. Sounds like just silly neighborhood optics to me.
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My assumption has been that it has no legal weight. However, if Scape is found to be leasing more than 25% to undergraduates, that will surely be brought up in the negotiations over their other upcoming projects (2 Charlesgate, the Beacon Street/Children's project, and Davis Square). Two of those are in the same neighborhood as this one, and the third is in another neighborhood likely to be hostile to student renters.

Similarly, Scape and the BPDA's willingness to entertain this obnoxious neighborhood behavior will also carry over to those projects, so expect all three of them to now carry the same stipulation, and expect other developers in college-adjacent neighborhoods across the region to be pressured into making the same sort of promise.

Undergraduates will never have proper political representation or be thought of as true "neighbors", so they'll continue to be mistreated without consequence.
 
cjbski said:
This looks good. The big question is: When does development start on the other side of the street?! Former Rite Aid...Guitar Center/CVS...Post Office...Verb...? Plus the Red Sox parcels along Jersey St. and nearby.

Tons more to come.
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What about the 2 Charlesgate W proposal?
Was it split up?
 
Some wires must be crossed here because the tolerant, inclusive people of Fenway would never advocate for housing discrimination against any group. Why, if this alleged crime against Holy Diversity was true then they would be...they would be...hypocrites! 😲
 
Brad Plaid said:
Some wires must be crossed here because the tolerant, inclusive people of Fenway would never advocate for housing discrimination against any group. Why, if this alleged crime against Holy Diversity was true then they would be...they would be...hypocrites! 😲
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And how could the "good people" of the Fenway have ever known that undergraduate students might be attracted to residences in their neighborhood when these good people chose to live there. It is not like their neighborhood is surrounded by colleges, universities and music conservatories.
 
Equilibria said:
My assumption has been that it has no legal weight. However, if Scape is found to be leasing more than 25% to undergraduates, that will surely be brought up in the negotiations over their other upcoming projects (2 Charlesgate, the Beacon Street/Children's project, and Davis Square). Two of those are in the same neighborhood as this one, and the third is in another neighborhood likely to be hostile to student renters.

Similarly, Scape and the BPDA's willingness to entertain this obnoxious neighborhood behavior will also carry over to those projects, so expect all three of them to now carry the same stipulation, and expect other developers in college-adjacent neighborhoods across the region to be pressured into making the same sort of promise.

Undergraduates will never have proper political representation or be thought of as true "neighbors", so they'll continue to be mistreated without consequence.
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I agree, I don't see how this would have legal weight, pure optics. I also don't understand how the city would get metrics about what percent of the building is students either. And it is fucked up that they can get away with this, while students are not a protected class everyone knows this innuendo for age discrimination.
 
All this bitching about discriminating against undergraduates, the building was never intended to house them.

Scape has filed notice with the city to build a 205,500-square-foot, 15-story building on Boylston Street in the Fenway, replacing a row of low-slung storefronts along a stretch of the road that has otherwise been transformed by new development over the last decade. The building would fit about 500 units aimed largely at graduate students, a population Scape says is “often overlooked” and has “particularly acute” housing needs in Boston.
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From the Globe article on page one of this thread. The last sentence is valid on both points, witness MIT commitment to building more residence halls for its graduate students.
 
stellarfun said:
All this bitching about discriminating against undergraduates, the building was never intended to house them.


From the Globe article on page one of this thread. The last sentence is valid on both points, witness MIT commitment to building more residence halls for its graduate students.
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...and then they changed the program at the neighbors' insistence that graduate student housing was unacceptable. It's young people the neighbors hate, not any particular type of student. That's what makes it offensive.
 
Equilibria said:
... It's young people the neighbors hate, not any particular type of student. That's what makes it offensive.
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I don't get it. Is this an area made up of mostly 50+ residents? Or is the area already overflowing with students and the minority (the long time residents) are fed up?
 
JeffDowntown said:
Well, per BPDA Neighborhood Profiles, Fenway is definitely dominated by 18-24 yo residents (59%) versus 17% Boston overall.

http://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/7987d9b4-193b-4749-8594-e41f1ae27719
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By those same stats 43% of Fenway residents live in "dorms or other institutions" rather than in "households." The vast majority of that 43% are likely housed in BU, Northeastern, and other school's on-campus housing. They don't live in the "neighborhood" per se.

If people living in "dorms or other institutions" are, say, 75% 18-24 yo, that means that about 27% of off-campus Fenway is 18-24 yo.

I live two blocks from this site and my immediate neighbors are overwhelmingly young adults but not undergrads (think: mid-20s to mid-30s / young professionals, nurses, residents, and fellows), plus some older (50+) individuals and young families.
atlantaden said:
I don't get it. Is this an area made up of mostly 50+ residents? Or is the area already overflowing with students and the minority (the long time residents) are fed up?
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The neighborhood is young but the "old-timers" are vastly over-represented among the people who show up to public meetings and have a voice in this process.
 
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As noted it is certainly worth noting that the Fenway neighborhood includes all the way up to Ruggles station including most of Northeastern's housing stock, excluding the few in Roxbury/Back Bay.
 
JumboBuc said:
By those same stats 43% of Fenway residents live in "dorms or other institutions" rather than in "households." The vast majority of that 43% are likely housed in BU, Northeastern, and other school's on-campus housing. They don't live in the "neighborhood" per se.

If people living in "dorms or other institutions" are, say, 75% 18-24 yo, that means that about 27% of off-campus Fenway is 18-24 yo.

I live two blocks from this site and my immediate neighbors are overwhelmingly young adults but not undergrads (think: mid-20s to mid-30s / young professionals, nurses, residents, and fellows), plus some older (50+) individuals and young families.


The neighborhood is young but the "old-timers" are vastly over-represented among the people who show up to public meetings and have a voice in this process.
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Jumbobuc -- the actual owners of single family and small multifamily buildings are overwhelmingly older than the undergraduates in just about any neighborhood*1 -- they are the folks who see the pool of "loose" undergraduates as making a major contribution to the deterioration of the neighborhood -- whether this is justified by data or not.

*1
the only exception are the Euro/Asian Fatcats who buy condos for their kids as a place to house them during their undergrad years often in the names of the children. Then when the students finish their degree and leave the area the properties are sold back into the "heap"
 
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#bancars said:
This stretch of Boylston desperately needs a road diet. Given the streetwall and amenities here, the pedestrian and cyclist experience is rather dismal.
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Bancars -- its called a Street -- and its a major arterial for a reason it has the function of moving vehicles from one part of the city to another -- there is no room for a "Road Diet"

In my humble opinion we have too many cliche's commonly embedded in these discussions without any care as to whether their inclusion is apropos to the discussion: Road Diet, Induced Demand, etc.
 
#bancars said:
This stretch of Boylston desperately needs a road diet. Given the streetwall and amenities here, the pedestrian and cyclist experience is rather dismal.
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I have seen plans circulating for protected bike lanes etc on this street but no firm timeline. Originally it was labeled as a 2019 project but obviously not anymore. The site plan for this project also includes a protected cycle track running on their expanded sidewalk area, so I expect at least that will be built.
 
#bancars said:
This stretch of Boylston desperately needs a road diet. Given the streetwall and amenities here, the pedestrian and cyclist experience is rather dismal.
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As a pedestrian in the neighborhood, Boylston is a relative paradise compared to the mess that is Park Drive, Fenway, and Riverway. For example, there's a sidewalk straight ahead in this shot that dumps directly into a major signaled intersection with no crosswalk or pedestrian walk signal. Cars always have the green, and pedestrians need to just go around and find somewhere else to cross. Other signalized cross walks will give cars the red without giving pedestrians the walk, so if you want to cross you pretty much have to cross against the signal.

Lives could literally be saved if the light cycles on the DCR / Army Corps-designed roads around here were reprogrammed for a cost of approximately $0.
 
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