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Owner of gas station on Morton Street in Mattapan wants to replace his pumps with a five-story residential building
By adamg on Wed, 06/12/2024 - 9:46am
Akmal Moawed, owner of a gas station at 841 Morton St., at Norfolk Street, in Mattapan, says he will soon file plans with the BPDA to raze the station for a five-story, 48-unit residential building.
In a "letter of intent," Moawed's consultant on the project says the proposal will include 52 parking spaces on the lot, just 300 feet to the Morton Street station on the Fairmount Line, and roughly 2,100 square feet of ground-floor retail space.
Moawed has owned the half-acre lot since 2002, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records.
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Comments
Wither 844 Morton?
That acre to the south of Morton Street would certainly do better as 100 units of housing instead of a gas station, so, even with "too many" parking spaces, this is a good move.
WTF happened across the street, through? 2021 streetview showed that it was going to be 14 units in a three-story building. Since then it has become an overgrown lot.
The other question is whether the owner of Economy Plumbing will ever sell that 9 acre plot for development although he seems more interested in investing in gold.
52 Parking Spaces!?!
Yes, there will be 52 parking spaces. There could already be 52 parking spaces on this site.
The bonus is that there will be 48 units of TOD.
You don't have to park there but some people will.
This is good. This is the second TOD around Morton Station and me wonders how much longer Walgreens will use that space across the street. Walgreens has been experimenting with 2,500 square foot (as opposed to 15,000 square foot stores) in rural Maine and Ohio. They are also opening pharmacies in strip malls and getting rid of things like beach chairs and whole aisle of suntan lotion. It is a 30 year old building that might be ripe for redevelopment.
The Fairmount line is supposed to be the line that is to get more headways with the battery operated trains. This is a win win if it happens.
Fairmount Line
I haven't checked into the details yet, but electrification of the Fairmount Line, with service every 20 minutes, was included in the MBTA's five-year capital plan released this week (well, maybe call it batterification, since, yeah, the idea is the T will spring for trains operated by big batteries, to be recharged in Readville, I think, rather than installing a catenary system).
Yeah but that's because the T is run by morons
Charging at Readville is just stupid.
There are wires on the north end. If you're dumb enough not to wire the whole corridor (and let's be clear, this is dumb) then at least use the existing electrification rather than building your own.
The first mile from South Station is already electrified, and that's a slow speed area, plus dwell and changing ends at South Station, so that's already there. There are two over-grade bridges which might be a bit tricky, the first of which is an additional 2.5 miles south of there (past Four Corners-Geneva). So 3.5 miles south of South Station could be used for charging while in motion.
But leave it to the T to reinvent the wheel when it entirely doesn't need to be reinvented. As a bonus, it provides worse service and costs more!
Also, With This
One less gas station in this section of town.
The ones at BHA and ALH and BHA and Morton Street are sometimes a $1.00 per gallon more than stations on Gallivan Boulevard.
The people of this part of Mattapan, Dot and Roxbury are getting shafted with gas prices.
Switch to an EV
Gas prices become irrelevant and, even better, no gas tax! Win win!
No gas tax, but ...
First, with the elimination of the Bolt, there are no low-cost EVs on the market. Yes, GM's bringing it back, but it's going to be bigger, i.e., more expensive, and yes, there are tax credits available for some EVs, but they're still expensive. Bottom-level Leaf? Maybe, if you discount the fact it has far less range than other models, including the Bolt (and I don't think it's eligible for the federal tax credit).
Also, charging lags way behind availability of the cars. Live in an apartment in an older building? Forget about it. Live in a house where your power comes in the opposite side of the house from your driveway? You're looking at a fairly large expense just to get your internal wiring set for charging even before you buy a charger (raises hand here, although I'll admit I don't know if our house is unusual this way). Don't have a driveway? Well, you could try to get a variance from the zoning board to add one (they've been fairly sympathetic to the idea), but then you have to pay somebody to dig out the space and pave a driveway for you.
So if you can buy an EV, great, do so. Otherwise, buy a hybrid - you'll use less gas, which is both environmentally better and means you aren't quite as reliant on the neighborhood gas station.
Agree
EV reminds me of calculators in the 1960s and 1970s - calculators were for the scientific and financial set, and the cheapest four-function calculator, including square roots and memory, set you back at least $100 (in early 1970s dollars - the really good scientific calculators with eight digits and trigonometric functions set you back at least $350).
What knocked down the cost of a calculator? Mass production - and by the end of the 1970s, the price went down from $100 to $19.95 for a basic calculator (and scientific calculators for under $75). By the 80s, you could get a decent, ten-digit scientific calculator for $20, and by the aughts, a decent graphing calculator for under $150. A couple of years ago, Dollar Tree offered a scientific calculator for $1.00 (now $1.25) - it was 10 digits and had all of the functions for 1/100th of the early 1970s cost.
The craze about EV (and particularly buses, which the MBTA will be getting 450 by the end of this decade) dampens quickly when you consider the costs and the environmental impacts. I agree with Adam - hybrid cars (and buses for that matter) would be much better, rather than the virtue-signaling status symbols represented by EV's. For now, EV's a wealthy person's plaything that will be unobtainable to the middle and lower classes until it is mass produced, the technology is improved, and the prices go down.
Eh
Used model 3’s are going for $20k. Similar used Prius’ go for $25k and come with ICE maintenance, expenses, and gas costs.
If your house can’t handle a single dedicated 120v 20A draw you have some major issues with the electrical in your house. We have three 240V 60A drops in our garage for the day (50% by 2030. Thanks Biden!) when the Government forces us to buy EVs.
Charging without a driveway/garage is definitely an issue, but owning a car comes with expenses and use cases.
There's been a gas station on
There's been a gas station on Mr. Moawed's site for at least the past 50 years. I wonder how many owners and name changes it has gone through and when it was first built? I'm betting sometime in the 1950s.