Roslindale casts wary eye at Forest Hills; residents wonder if they're next

For the second time this month, a community meeting on a proposed Roslindale development that would be small by South Boston or Forest Hills standards raised fears that Roslindale is about to be rushed by developers who will try to completely overwhelm the neighborhood with projects far denser than allowed under a rezoning plan worked out by residents and the city only a few years ago.

At least this time, the developer had some good news for neighbors: Tony Ferrara told about 30 residents, gathered at the Sons of Italy hall, that he will not tear down the large house at the top of the hill at 175 Poplar St. where Mary Baker Eddy briefly worked and lived.

Neighbors of the large house, who include City Council President Michelle Wu, agreed to postpone a hearing on the house before the city Landmarks Commission scheduled for mid-October for at least two months to try to work with Ferrara on a proposal that would keep the house, now divided into four condos, and build up to five additional units - four in two townhouse condos, one as a single-family house - on the 39,000-square-foot parcel.

Residents had sought the hearing to try for official landmark status to protect the house and its leafy property after Ferrara filed for a demolition permit this summer. They said tonight they would still need to see detailed plans for the new units on the relatively steep hill and for the trees that Ferrara would try to keep before agreeing to back his plans before the Boston Planning and Development Agency - what the BRA is now calling itself - and the Zoning Board of Appeals, where his current plans would require a use variance - but would meet zoning requirements for height and setback.

Several residents pointed to the possible look of the new buildings Ferrara might put on the Poplar Street land as a key factor for them - they don't want that clapboard stuff going up on apartment buildings across the city, but instead something that looks like all the old houses along Poplar and Augustus.

Well, except for Joe Cappuccio of Augustus Avenue, who said he's fought three times since the 1940s with developers who wanted to tear the big old house down and who said he would fight whatever Ferrara proposes. Noting that Ferrara lives in West Roxbury, Cappuccio told him: "There's plenty of land you can build on there. Go to West Roxbury where you belong!"

Ferrara said he is giving up one of the total of ten new units he could put on the land under its existing zoning to work with neighbors to preserve the unique property. But Wu told residents they should look out for what's best for them, not worry about what a developer says is necessary to make a project economically viable for him.

Wu said she's hearing from all over the city that negotiations between developers and residents are starting from the developer's financial minimums, not what's best for their neighborhoods.

It's a particularly sensitive issue in Roslindale, where residents and Menino-administration officials came up with a new zoning map for the neighborhood that preserved the less dense nature of the area while still allowing for some commercial and residential development.

Dennis Kirkpatrick, who spent long hours at some of those meetings, warned that Roslindale is in danger of being subsumed by developers who aren't content to live within the neighborhood's zoning and are beginning to start "stripping this community of the zoning that has kept Roslindale what it is."

He pointed to the demolition of two houses on Taft Hill Terrace to make way for a new condo project and a proposal on Cummins Highway to tear down a three-family house to make way for a four-story, 14-unit apartment building - which would require several zoning variances for being too tall, too dense and too close to neighboring properties.

Given the BRA/BPDA's penchant for approving dense projects and then backing them before the zoning board, he worried Roslindale could one day become as dense as the South End - something he said people moved to Roslindale to escape. "It's not going to be quirky Roslindale anymore," he said.

The largest current proposal for Roslindale is a 137-unit apartment complex on Walk Hill Street, off American Legion Highway.

Cathy Slade, president of the Roslindale Historical Society, had something even closer to worry about: The massive apartment projects along Washington Street in Forest Hills, where she said the BRA approved "boxes with punched out windows" that she said are "ugly as hell."

At a meeting last week on the Cummins Highway proposal, residents expressed similar concerns about the neighborhood's future - and also pointed to Forest Hills as something they don't want Roslindale to turn into.

In that case, the developer, City Realty, agreed to consider a request from residents to take a floor off the four-story proposal.