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Board likes proposed Allston apartment building but tells developer to come back with some more open space on the lot

Proposed rendering of 17 Linden St.

Rendering of proposed 17 Linden St. by Khalsa Design.

The Zoning Board of Appeal yesterday rejected plans for a 14-unit apartment building - with three affordable units - at 17 Linden St., saying that while they and the Boston Planning Department both agree it would be a great addition to the side street off Cambridge Street, it just needs to be pruned back a bit to add some more open space in an area nowhere near a park.

The board voted to deny the project without prejudice, which means owner City Realty can come back in less than a year to try again.

Its plans called for 675 square feet of total open space, almost all of that consisting of decks, rather than any sort of greenery. "It is a good project, it's just not quite there yet," board member David Collins said. One of the zoning violations for which it needed a variance was that the rear side of the building would be just 8 feet from its lot line, rather than the required 30, on the 6,490-square foot lot.

City Realty's attorney, George Morancy, said his client would readily agree to increase the open space, possibly by ditching most of the six parking spaces proposed for the site, which would allow for a little landscaped area in the back.

When he realized the board was on the verge of voting to deny, he asked for a deferral to allow time to revise the plans - he said he only learned of the planning department's objections to the relative lack of space in a document he got on Friday.

But like Omar Khayyam's moving finger, once the board has started a hearing, it doesn't move back and so instead of granting a deferral, it formally rejected the proposal, which will take more time for City Realty to resubmit plans and get a new hearing date than a deferral.

The board does let applicants ask for deferrals, but only before their projects have come up for a hearing; Morancy said that if he realized the board would have voted to reject, he would have asked for a deferral then.

Morancy also failed in an effort to have the open-space issue resolved in planning-board "design review" after an approval. Such review is routine for all but the most minor of zoning approvals.

But while the planning department's Jeff Hampton agreed that "Linden Street is ripe for this type of project" and that the street's zoning is way, way out of date given the rapid development all around it, he said "design review" is usually just meant for relatively minor design changes, such as paint colors or the location of garage doors. He said he doubted the department's urban-design planners would want to tackle what he called "major" changes such as reducing the overall size of the building, which might mean a reduction in the total of units, including of the affordable ones; that that is something City Realty's architects should be doing.

"If the proponent is agreeable, they should've done them in the first place," he said.

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Comments

Ringer Park is a 10-15 minute walk away.

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Voting closed 32

I'm wondering why we have zoning with a 30' setback at all. This is 'the city' not a middle of nowhere suburb...

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Voting closed 43

Still has a lot of single-family homes, so that would make more sense than with what Linden Street, especially up by Cambridge Street has become: Apartment buildings (in fact, City Realty has approval to gut renovate the old Jack Young building right at the corner into apartments and the owner of the place across the street with the nightclub that was always getting into trouble has permission to tear it down for apartments, although he's said he can no longer get financing for that). An so, both the zoning board and the planning department said yesterday, yeah, the area should be rezoned - but that didn't help City Realty with this one relatively small proposal.

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Voting closed 27

I question if we need to have 'open space' in every single building that goes up. Yes I agree we need more open space but do we need EVERY SINGLE BUILDING to comply?

I looked at where this it. Its an empty lot currently. Its gonna be tight, do we really need to put public space here?

No fan of parked cars and glad to see the owner would nix those for the space but still..

We're in a housing crunch here, do we have the room to deny building something because they didn't include a 15 foot x 15 foot 'outdoor space' in a rear of a building that no one will use?

No. I get why we do this but with the market as it is, not sure we should continue to enforce this as much as we do.

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Voting closed 47

This little piecemeal BS of "open space" here and there doesn't add up to anything and is about as useful as ensuring we have mulch bed islands in parking lots for diseased crabapple trees.

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Voting closed 20

My fav is when MassDOT says they are going to create a park somewhere so people can "get in touch with nature and the serene surroundings. "

Then they build it and its basically a traffic island with a bench and some bushes.

Nothing says "nature" and "serene" like being surrounded by cars and smog.

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Voting closed 17

City Realty's attorney, George Morancy, said his client would readily agree to increase the open space, possibly by ditching most of the six parking spaces proposed for the site

Removing parking spaces would probably be digging himself into an even deeper hole with the ZBA and any local NIMBYs.

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Voting closed 21