Boston’s downtown plan gets some boos

Boston’s “Brutalist” City Hall.

From The Boston Guardian (New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian.)

By Jules Roscoe

BOSTON

The city’s new Downtown zoning plan has yet another draft, this time with a new district along Washington Street that will allow buildings of up to 500 feet tall, and Downtown residents are not happy.

At a recent virtual public meeting, they berated Boston Planning Department (BPD) officials over the new PLAN: Downtown proposal, which they said all but scrapped six years of work by a city selected community and expert advisory board.

“When we were talking about PLAN:

Downtown, and we’ve been talking about it for six years, we were talking about 155 feet,” Martha McNamara, a preservationist who served on the advisory board, said in the meeting.

“What we now have is a strip of 500 feet that runs through the center of this historic and vibrant neighborhood. What this amendment tells me is that you have wasted my time.”

PLAN: Downtown originated in 2018 as a way to revitalize a neighborhood that had not been zoned since 1989. The new plan was intended to simplify the area to make it easier for developers, while preserving important historic landmarks and creating an inviting mixed-use district for residents.

Under the latest iteration of the zoning plan, released by Mayor Michelle Wu’s office on January 8, Downtown will have a new “SKY-R” district, which encompasses Washington and Stewart Streets. In this district, buildings are limited to a height of 155 feet, unless over 60 percent of building use is residential, in which case the maximum height is 500 feet. Housing was the Planning Department’s biggest selling point in the meeting.

“Key corridors like Washington Street can really support critical housing growth for the city,” senior planner Andrew Nahmias said in the meeting. “Overall, this [zone] is meant to reinforce the spine of Washington Street, while recognizing the sensitivity of some of the historic fabric there.”

Residents have until February 4 to comment on the draft. In the virtual meeting on January 15, however, they came out in full force. Attendance in the Zoom meeting hovered around 230 people, and the meeting lasted a full two hours. The most common concern was timing.

“With all due respect, this plan was dropped in our laps less than a week ago,” said Ryan St Marie, the manager of a luxury residential building that would be in the new SKY-R district. “This short time period is a slap in the face. I guarantee there would be 500 people on this call if you gave us proper notice. The fact that you’re giving us three weeks to respond, not appropriate.”

The other overwhelming concern among residents was that the new draft looked nothing like the previous iteration of the plan, issued last April. Rishi Shukla, the head of the Downtown Boston Residents’ Association who served on the advisory board, said that the previous plan had supported about 80 percent of what the board had suggested, but that the new plan looked nothing like it.

“The increase of height along the entirety of Washington Street was literally never contemplated because it was such a ridiculous notion, even back then,” Shukla said in a phone call. “The idea that we’re talking about that now as a solution is just. It’s a head scratcher.”

Kairos Shen, the head of the BPD since September, said he thought the current draft was a good compromise between the competing needs of developers and residents. Shen ran the planning department before the Walsh administration and was responsible for developing much of the Seaport.

“There’s been a lot of concern about some of the changes, and whether you will have enough time to actually review them,” Shen said at the end of the meeting. “So I’ve registered them. I think me being here tonight is representative of how serious we are taking the issues that have been raised.”

Two days after the meeting, the Planning Department announced it would hold another “office hours” meeting the next Wednesday for residents to voice more concerns.

“Within City Hall, my understanding from sources is this set off a bit of a firestorm internally,” Shukla said in a phone call. “Nobody was expecting the participation that they saw.”