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Board defers action on East Boston apartments to ensure beloved bodega's future is assured first
By adamg on Tue, 09/12/2023 - 12:50pm
Rendering by Adam Glassman (fourth floor not shown).
The Zoning Board of Appeal today put off any action on a proposal to add apartments to a building at 6 Brooks St., off Bremen Street in East Boston, so that attorneys for the owner and the Delicious Market can work out a lease that will let the bodega stay.
Building owners Tom Walsh and Peter Ryan were seeking board permission to add three stories to the building and a rear extension to increase the number of apartments from three to six.
Their attorney, Jeff Drago, said the owners really want to keep Hector Martinez's market stay, to the point they are willing to offer him rent at roughly half the market rate. Drago said his clients had offered a three-year lease with a possible two-year extension. "We love having Hector in the building, we want him to remain," Walsh said.
But Martinez's attorney, Tony Blaize, said the most recent formal offering was for just a one-year lease. Although the two sides negotiated that up to three years, Blaize said Martinez would prefer a five-year lease with extension clauses; that anything less would not make financial sense.
Nearby residents said they were worried about losing Delicious Market, saying that not only does Martinez stock products from their home countries, he often goes well beyond, for example, by delivering groceries to residents with mobility issues. Some also expressed concern about parking - the building would have none.
Drago said his clients would be more than happy to try to work out a five-year lease; and at one point in the meeting it seemed like the two sides were using the session to negotiate that. Walsh pointed to the building's location, like a 15-second walk from the Airport Blue Line stop, as proof new tenants would not overload the area.
Board member Hansy Better Barraza, however, called for a month delay in a vote on the required variances. She said one of her guiding tenets as a zoning-board member is "development without displacement" and that she was not yet satisfied this particular building could guarantee that.
Other members agreed and the board deferred any action until a meeting on Oct. 17.
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Comments
Looks like housing needs are
Looks like housing needs are not that pressing
It’s not the needs
it’s the cost. People erroneously think the more units the more the cost of housing goes down. The more units only means the developer makes more money. 6 units the developer makes 100% more than three.
This makes no sense.
This makes no sense.
thank you
The argument of simple supply and demand on housing in the Boston market is a near complete fallacy. Housing is not built solely for the purpose of housing people, it's also an investment vehicle. You'll "meet demand" and cause prices to go down when investors and real estate trusts run out of money to invest in properties or start going to other investment options. Relying on the market to provide what should be a basic human right (like to housing) is always going to end up like this. It's been going on for generations in Boston.
This guy gets it.
This guy gets it.
Are you implying that no one
Are you implying that no one lives in investor owned properties?
I think Covid perfectly illustrated that it is supply and demand. Rents plummeted 20% when the college students took off. I don’t know if many real-life, textbook examples of how much housing costs are ruled by supply and demand.
This is separate from your argument that housing is a right and we shouldn’t rely on capitalism to provide it. This is a defendable argument. The argument that supply and demand is not the driving factor in housing costs is not.
Highly regulated markets with strong demand and low supply also create black markets. Be careful what you wish for.
If the city's zoning
If the city's zoning regulators want to support neighborhood bodegas, they shouldn't interfere with the leases of individual properties. They should change the zoning so ground-floor retail is allowed in residential areas by right.
Plan East Boston
That's precisely what they're proposing to do in the new article 53 zoning being proposed by the BPDA in Plan East Boston. (with some limitations in terms of being on corners, etc. not just the first floor of all residential properties.)
Board defers action on East
Don't believe this is a government function.
Not directly related but… you
Not directly related but… you know what’s no longer on Harvard Ave is Allston. A Laundromat. You know what else isn’t there, more housing during a housing crisis.
I certainly feel for this business owner, but take the three-year lease and go from there. Don't try to win at all costs, because the costs are high if we don’t have enough housing for everyone. At the end of the day we are prioritizing a business over housing people.
The ZBA could have given a conditional approval with the caveat that the store get a three-year lease.
This is why it is so expensive to build here and further drives housing costs.