NStar buying Roslindale hilltop where those green towers used to be

NStar is confirming it is buying land behind the Stop & Shop on American Legion Highway and the Oak Lawn Cemetery on Cummins Highway that until recently was best known for the green towers meant to support netting for the driving range that was supposed to be built there.

However, the company is denying rumors it plans to put a solar farm up on the recently cleared Barry's Ledge land, which has largely laid fallow in the decades since it stopped serving as a quarry for the old Boston Elevated Railway (BERy)- a predecessor of the MBTA. "At this time, we have no immediate plans for use," a spokesperson said today.

NStar is buying the 12-acre parcel from the owner of Oak Lawn Cemetery. Real-estate agent Jonathan Bowen, who is selling a house on Pleasantview Street, which adjoins the land, reported yesterday on a conversation with Todd Burne of Oak Lawn:

He told me that Victoria-Mutual Limited Partnership [which he owns] is in the process of selling the land to NSTAR and that he believes that NSTAR is going to let the land sit before potentially developing it into an electrical substation but not a power plant; I believe that the land would be better suited as a solar power field. If this is true than the good news is that there won’t be a cemetery or a strip mall behind 109 Pleasantview Street.

Over the decades, a number of uses have been proposed for the open space at the top of the filled-in quarry (the lower part became the mall where the Bradlees used to be and the Stop & Shop still is), including a city incinerator and a 5,000-student high school and a subdivision.

BERy used to haul away gravel from the site in freight trolleys.

A trek up the hill.