Hey, there! Log in / Register
Developer wins approval to replace single-family home with nine-unit building in Brighton
By adamg on Wed, 09/26/2018 - 9:26am
The Board of Appeals yesterday approved Patrick O'Sullivan's plans to replace a single-family home at 9 Glencoe St., off North Beacon Street and near Market Street, with a building with seven three-bedroom units and two two-bedroom units.
The lot sits kitty-corner from an existing multi-family building in a part of the city growing rapidly thanks in part to the New Balance development along Guest Street.
Among the reasons the project needed a zoning variance - in addition to the fact the lot is not zoned for multi-famiy use - was that it didn't have enough open space and had too much of the lot dedicated to an "accessory" use - parking. O'Sullivan's attorney, George Morancy, said that's because O'Sullivan agreed to a neighborhood request to provide 18 parking spaces - two per unit - and that providing that much parking meant making a trade-off with the open-space requirement.
The proposal was backed by the mayor's office, City Councilors Mark Ciommo and Annissa Essaibi George and the Brighton Allston Improvement Association. Only the BPDA spoke against the proposal, because of the dearth of provided green space.
Because the project has under 10 units, it does not fall under the city's affordable-housing requirements.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Argh. So much for trees and
Argh. So much for trees and open space for people. It's all about MOAR CARS!!!
huh?
vacant lots and junkyard houses are not open space.
Move to the suburbs then
Weston has lots of trees and housing is astronomically expensive.
Oh wait, then you'd need a car to get to the city and to work unlike developments in the city, near major transportation routes.
Near transportation hubs, you say?
With 2 cars per unit they don't expect people do actually use public transportation in this Brighton location either.
How about fewer trees, less parking, and more units?
Did you even read Adam's story?
They're putting in two spaces per unit because the neighborhood requested it. Translation: "Wahhhh we don't want to have to share the street parking wahhhhh."
9 units / 18 parking spaces
Wow! So much for transit-oriented development!
Brighton
Have you ever used the T to get downtown (or anywhere) from Brighton? The service is awful. Sad!
501 / 503 / Brighton Landing
Several ways to get downtown from Brighton on the T. Lots of people bike from Brighton (and beyond) to downtown along the Charles River.
biking vs T
I bike from my home in Brighton to downtown and the Seaport district. What's sad is that biking is quite a bit faster than taking the T. I don't understand why they call the Green Line (other than the D branch) "rapid transit".
I live a couple blocks away
I live a couple blocks away and me and many of my neighbors take the 64 to Kendall every day. Really is not awful. I've also used the commuter rail to go to the Seaport for conferences (easy enough to walk from South Station). It is infinitely better than a lot of the city.
Brighton transit mostly sucks
The 57 takes forever to get to Kenmore Square, as does the the B line. The express buses are relatively expensive and only run during rush hour, with no weekend service. Train service at the New Balance station is not that frequent, either. The 64 from Oak Square to Central/Kendall is another milk-run, often stuck in traffic and delayed by the roadwork and construction going on.
I honestly don't understand
why you would want to pay the premium to live in a place like this (a few steps away from two major bus lines, half a mile from green line or commuter rail stops) if you were planning to be a two-car household. These are going to be $900K condos, in large part because you're paying for easy access to public transit!
Yes, this is the neighborhood's fault, not the developer's, but good god, man. Of all the stupid things to make room for, two parking spaces per apartment has to be about the worst.
900K for something brand new and semi luxury
Ever see what kind of house you get in Brookline or Newton for 900K? You might get some space and a yard, but it wont be luxury and you will need to put some money into it pretty soon.
This was the first project I
This was the first project I ever heard at the BAIA and it was such a lovefest. Then everything else was a disaster. People upset about rats from a single family then the Englewood disaster, some huge development where minake is followed by the Dispensery next to the Dunks.
Was an amazing (like a hurricane) experience in local governance.
on the edge of an old neighborhood
i wonder how the family next door, who have been there over 40 years, feels about this?
Who cares?
Maybe it's time for them to cash in and head down to Florida.
i lived on this block for 10
i lived on this block for 10 years a while back. When i moved in it was all families that have been there for a generation (or two). In fact my landlord was a lady who bought the house in the 30s. When i moved out, most of those families moved out or passed away. I dont know about this address specfically, but i do know that this construction will be supremely annoying for a year or so. I bet they start at 6am every morning.
$$$???
i wonder how the family next door felt in 2016 when the house next to theirs sold for $850K
its still a neighborhood for some people
they care. i understand they will profit from selling.
where did you grow up? does it still exist?
Brighton still exists
even with a 9 unit building on Glencoe St
Neigborhoods != "houses only"
NYC has many neighborhoods that are block after block of apartment buildings.
Get over your single family fixation - most of the world does not live this way, has neighborhoods
There are parts of Boston, even Brighton, like that, too
So?
Whether or not it's a good thing this block is transitioning from single-family homes to apartments/condos is for somebody else to ponder (I live nowhere near there). But please get over your multi-family fixation - there are significant parts of the city where people live in, yes, neighborhoods of single/two-family homes.
> Whether or not it's a good
> Whether or not it's a good thing this block is transitioning from single-family homes to apartments/condos
Are you serious? Across the street on this block has 0 single family homes. Literally, you have a condo building from 1965 (18 Glencoe), townhouses from 1998, and apartments from 1920 facing North Beacon. The next door neighbor has been an electrical supply shop forever. A few houses in the other direction on this side of the street, you have another condo building from 1965 (35 Glencoe).
The notion that this block is transitioning now ignores the fact that there have been condo buildings on this street for 50 years.
The kids only care for nostalgia
BostonKid is a suburbanite with romantic glasses - he doesn't live there, he has no interest in this other than it staying like his childhood - which is dumb.
Otherwise, people sell because old lady died and now there is a six way split of the sale.
dear anon
my great grandparents built a house in that neighborhood in 1912. my whole family, including my children were born in the hospital up the hill, most of us worked there too. i attended the same neighborhood catholic school my mother and my grandfather attended. i remember hearing stories of cows being corralled in the backyard of my house that had escaped from the stockyards when my mother was a kid. my grandfathers brother bought the house next door and raised his family there i played in the old hoods milk factory/duddy tires field as a kid. my dad wanted to leave the hospital so he could come home and die in that house. it holds a lot of strong important memories for me.
one day about 10 years ago i came out of my house and i realized i didn't know who who any of my neighbors were anymore. i get it, times change and you're right, old ladies sell and suddenly that one family is a six unit complex. my family sold two years ago because my grandmother had to go into a nursing home and we needed the money. all our neighbors were gone but it was still painful letting go, but i get it. im not dumb, it just hurts to watch the place where i had so many wonderful memories vanish under new construction. i work in the construction industry and i am amazed at the things that are happening in boston right now. we are booming and i will always love this city. i just miss my old neighborhood sometimes and its not really there anymore.
isnt ok for me to look through my romantic glasses once in a while?
and its BOSTNKID
You go bostnkid....
I've lived on Benson St, Antwerp, played hoops at midnight on the Murray Courts, and got thrown out of Hogan's run at 2am (after starting at the IV around noon).
Keep it up, I always like the stories.
They are not the first to go
The house in question is to the right. Scroll to the left to see two other developments already in the neighborhood. Build it.
https://goo.gl/maps/Ut4GP7FHnwP2
Those "developments" were
Those "developments" were built in the 60's, and have one parking space per unit.
Good
This location seems to be exactly where we should be densifying, within easy walking distance of both the new Brighton business district and the new train station. This is how cities are supposed to work.
More of this needs to happen.
More of this needs to happen.
one-family houses are just wastes of space in these locations.