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Long dormant West Roxbury apartment project revived, now with far less parking
By adamg on Wed, 04/12/2023 - 2:26pm
The Zoning Board of Appeal yesterday re-approved plans for construction of an 18-unit apartment building on a vacant triangle where a Texaco station used to sit at the intersection of Belgrade Avenue and Beech Street in West Roxbury.
Both the BPDA and the zoning board approved the proposal in 2016, but back in those days, boards were more likely to require lots of parking, especially in leafy areas such as West Roxbury, and so approved 33 parking spaces in an underground garage.
And then, nothing much happened. The remains of the gas station were torn down and a fence erected around the small parcel but no actual construction began. Last fall, developer John Douros, who had worked at the gas station as a teenager, told the BPDA he was finally ready to actually begin work. The board approved his request to reduce the number of spaces to 18, now that the agency has seen the virtue of trying to discourage parking, especially for parcels on or near several bus routes and a short walk from a commuter-rail station.
Also, the cost of the two-level underground garage initially proposed has ballooned to more than $3 million, which his lawyer, John Pulgini, said would make the entire project financially unfeasible.
At yesterday's zoning hearing, Pulgini said the long delay was due to litigation over ownership of the parcel.
Norfolk Superior Court records show that not long after winning city approval in the fall of 2016, Douros reached a deal to sell the land - and the rights to build - to an investor from China with an interest in Boston-area real-estate. But the deal fell through and the investor sued Douros to get back the $500,000 he said he had paid up front to hold the property before deciding to pull out of the deal. Douros argued the investor "breached" the agreement and so he had the right to keep the money.
The suit continues in Norfolk court - although the property is in Suffolk County, Douros's holding company is based at a gas station he owns in Brookline - but the two sides have agreed to submit to arbitration over the money, a process that is still ongoing.
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Comments
The fix is in
To be clear here, the unseen tactic these days is for the "no parking" lobby to embed themselves in the Impact Advisory Group (IAG) for the project at the BPDA. The IAG is seen as a representative of the neighborhood to advise on plans of this kind. However, recent IAG appointments have not been abutters. This is easy to verify.
So we can argue to the end of days about NIMBYs but the more-clever special interests embed themselves to get their will applied long before any member of the public or abutters see the proposal.
As to NIMBYs, well maybe we look at this wrong? We can see the need for affordable housing but a lot of what is being proposed and built does not meet the City of Boston's own calculation to be 30-50% Area Mean Income (AMI). Buildings are being created well above that number leaving the working class people on lower incomes with no place to live. As it stands, new employees for the City's positions that still have a residency requirement cannot afford to live here.
Also, when did we make one's property and desire to maintain a home and specific look and feel to the neighborhood that they chose to live in, a mortal sin.
Some comments on what we should be doing to FORCE property owners to build multiple unit buildings is not "progressive" thinking. On close inspection is is almost borderline Marxism. Look it up.
People have rights to maintain their homes and neighborhoods with that look and feel that brought them there to raise their families in the first place. Again, a right. Some of the comments is seeking to remove those rights guaranteed under law.
This entire process needs to be re-thought, but in doing so create housing for low-income people.
And let's be clear here... the mindset that creating more housing will cause rents to go down is a scene out of the Matrix. This is Regan trickle-down economics in a new wrapper. Any commenter here, I offer a challenge. When in your lifetime have you ever experienced a rent fee go down? I have rented all of my life and never have seen any drop ever. No one I ask can say the has been their experience either.
The use of "NIMBY" as a cuss word needs to stop. People have legal rights.
On close inspection is is
LOL you first
Deranged
Absolutely deranged rant you got there.
Are NIMBY's the Real Heroes?
No.
And do people have the "right" to keep their "neighborhoods" (which they do not own) unchanged in perpetuity, damn the consequences to others? Again, no.
A desire to maintain the look
A desire to maintain the look and feel of one's neighborhood is not a mortal sin, but the dishonesty and bad faith so many engage in to try to make it happen certainly are. People have the right to make the home they own look how they want. They have no right to control the rest of the neighborhood. If that's what you're after, I'm sure there's a subdivision somewhere in Texas with an HOA to your liking.
That “look and feel”
So, people want to maintain “that look and feel that brought them there to raise their families in the first place?”
It used to be a Citgo gas station. Then for 20 years or so, it was an abandoned gas station. It’s across the street from a used car parking lot. Apartments will be a nice improvement.
That's an awfully long post
I don't have time/am too lazy to read it. Would you please consolidate your point into a short paragraph of two or three sentences? Thx.
I'll save Waldo the time
Boiled down, his post can be stated in two words: development bad.
Cool conspiracy
Getting involved in your neighborhood is not a sinister plot. It’s how things have always worked.
Seeing needed housing get shot down led people to get involved and have a voice. It’s playing within the system that exists. The system didn’t “break” because you don’t like the decisions.
But the neighborhood character!
Keep calling out the NIMBYs, every time. They don't have a legal right over public or other people's private property.
Who the hell cherishes vacant lots and crumbling, abandoned buildings anyway and why does anyone listen to them? They should embed themselves in a nice, draconian, homeowners' association out in the suburbs where they can enjoy suing all their neighbors over the color and dimensions of each other's trash barrels.
Challenge accepted
January of 2021, buddy. January 2021. (Also, would you like a side of ranch dressing with your word salad?)
I had been living with roommates and with the pandemic that was less tenable, so I was looking around for somewhere on my own (I eventually moved in with someone in Charlestown, it wasn't the right choice and I probably wouldn't have but, you know, pandemic). The students were all gone. Supply hadn't changed, but demand had tanked. Everyone in town was giving out months of free rent. Proto, in Kendall Square, was offering studios for $1500 per month. A full service, luxury building in Kendall! Why? Because they had tons of empty apartments.
Anyway, me and not-Mrs.-Right were looking at something larger than the 1BR in Charlestown. We told the management we were considering elsewhere, and they offered to lower our rent, considerably! And more than once! We went from $2150/month to $2000/month to $1950/month with a month free incentive, so 1787.50, a 17% decrease overall (and the free month at the start of the lease). Apparently they had 12 empty apartments out of like 80 and couldn't afford to lose anyone else.
That's what happens when demand goes down and supply stays the same. Now what would happen if demand stayed the same but supply went up? I guess we'll have to ask Reagan to find out, right? Or Karl Marx?
Receipts:
###
QED
Literal borderline Marxism?
Or figurative?
Oh, and you might want to look into the history of all the cars and neighborhood associations that you seem to treasure. They are the product of literal racism and literal fascism.
1990-1991
In September 1990 I signed 1 year renewal of my lease in Allston. When I bought a house in early 1991 and tried to sublet my apt, I found that rents had dropped SUBSTANTIALLY and that I couldn't find anyone to take my place, even if I offered to cover $500 a month of their rent. It doesn't happen often, but it HAS happened and probably will happen again.
Poor Waldo
I got no idea where Waldo is but I know the above commenter is a NIMBY. LOL.
No parking
I really like public transportation and use it all the time. I went car-free for 6 years back around 2000. I know you can do it. But I did get tired of walking to Dedham to rent a car for the weekend, because Boston charged a $10 tax for each and every rental (to pay for the convention center, the kind of tax you’d levy on business accounts at airports - but it hit every car-free renter in the city too). Eventually I got a car again, and although I still use transit more than I drive, the car sure beats 3 1/2 hour trips to Worcester or trying to figure out how to get to Montreal.
The point is, in this world we’ve created, most people will want a car. In these no-parking apartment complexes, they will park on the street. What’s going to happen when all the new cars are electric, in about 10 years? There won’t be private parking areas with chargers in these complexes. All these people will be competing for limited public chargers along with everyone else who doesn’t have a driveway, and one look at the parked cars on the streets of Roslindale and West Roxbury will tell you that’s a lot of people. Eliminating parking spaces is a very short term answer that will create very long term problems.
I hear you
We certainly need better transit.
But why not just fly to Montreal? If you book a few weeks out you can get a roundtrip for $408. Given taking a rental across the border + gas + tolls + dealing with a car in YUL, how much extra does that cost?
(Or if you really hate yourself, take the 'Hound.)
I don't think this is
I don't think this is entirely figured out yet, but there are some things being tried -- in the UK there is a company commercializing curbside EV chargers, either in form factor similar to parking meters or built into light posts. Payment is collected similar to how Passport Parking/Park Boston/etc. apps work. There are some obvious challenges (their grid running in 220V probably helps a lot in reducing cost!), but the basic idea sounds ok.
I'm not an expert on this, but my understanding is that charging times on the newer technologies are rapidly declining -- already with 75% charge in 12 minutes -- but today's cars aren't compatible with this (combination of changes to both charger and battery design). We might see infrastructure that looks more like a gas station for charging, rather than today's "leave it parked for hours or overnight".
I'm OK with creating more housing & less parking, even with what right now looks like a problem in the end game, operating under the assumption that the fact that this is a problem is what will help spurn solutions. If the status quo was to stay, we'd never be forced to tackle the problem in the first place!
"Eliminating parking spaces
"Eliminating parking spaces is a very short term answer that will create very long term problems."
Agree 100 percent. The effect of limiting parking is at least two-fold.
1.) Those that require/want an automobile will pay slightly more for that amenity than those who do not.
2.)Employment can be more limited without a car. There are still hundreds of organizations in Boston and the surrounding area that are easier to access with a car, including the MBTA itself.
While this location is serviced by several bus lines and is near a commuter rail station, many jobs and much retail is off limits without a car.
Very little street parking but this could work for some without parking.
You should read too
It’s literally one spot for unit.
Read
I suggest you re-read this. This is not a no-parking development it is one spot per unit. This is not an example of the catastrophe you are envisioning, and in reality we actually have far too much parking, which incentivizes driving, raises the costs of housing, and is simply a poor use of space.