New Proposals Create Confusion For Boston’s Historic Districts And Properties
For a historic city like Boston, arguments about preserving the past are a local pastime, but a string of new proposals are putting the battle between preservation and development front and center.
Earlier this month, the city unveiled an amendment to its downtown zoning proposal that would allow taller towers in the historic area, and its efforts to redevelop the historic White Stadium in Franklin Park moved forward. Both projects have faced backlash from residents and preservationists who argue that their voices have been ignored.
With additional efforts around Chinatown and City Hall creating more confusion, both real estate players and preservation advocates tell Bisnow they feel uncertain about the priorities of city planners who are trying to preserve the past while ensuring growth for the future.
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"The justification for the new plan and the new zoning has been that ‘We want certainty,’ and I think that's a reasonable position to take," said Tony Pangaro, a former principal at Millennium Partners who has worked on some of downtown’s biggest projects. But he added that the downtown zoning plan doesn’t achieve that.
“The certainty you get from this is worse … this just gives you an unknown outcome, which is not the idea of a plan.”
Earlier this month, city officials unveiled the latest update to the Plan: Downtown proposal that would allow mostly residential towers to be built on the portion of Washington Street. The plan would allow projects of at least 60% residential up to 500 feet in what the city calls the Sky Residential Zone, while other projects would be capped at 155 feet without a special permit.
Residents and preservationists, including Boston Preservation Alliance and Revolutionary Spaces — the owner of Old South Meeting House and the Old State House building — opposed the new zoning code, stating it would disrupt the character of the neighborhood while only opening the door for high-end housing instead of affordable units.
"You always hear the adage of reduce, reuse, recycle,” Boston Preservation Alliance Deputy Director Matthew Dickey said. “The greenest building in the world is the one that already exists, right?"
The area of the neighborhood that the city is targeting for this zoning falls under a specific "Ladder Blocks" design that has the shortest height requirements on Tremont Street, across the street from the Boston Common Park and Public Gardens, with building heights gradually getting taller as they move toward Washington Street.
Dickey argued that there were better ways to address the housing shortage while also preserving older buildings, citing the James Collins Mansion in South Boston, which was converted into nine condominium units. The 19th-century building had two three-story wings on each side and was completed in 2017.
"The historic identity of that neighborhood still kind of exists in a new way. And I think all buildings are better when layers of history are added to them," Dickey said.
The downtown zoning proposal is significantly different from the one members saw earlier last year, which entailed four main areas for recommendations: growth, transportation, public space and climate resiliency. The plan kept the ladder blocks approach but added new height limits to only one part of the neighborhood.
"The thing that is most surprising, I think to everybody, is that the plan drastically changed out of nowhere," Dickey said. "Now we are trying to figure out with that change and these ideas, how do we come to a solution that works for everybody in Boston?"
A Boston Planning Department spokesperson said in a statement to Bisnow the zoning changes are meant to incentivize residential development.
“The new draft zoning for Downtown aims to balance the need for historic preservation with Boston’s significant need for housing,” the spokesperson said. ‘The amendment focuses on modernizing land uses to encourage new and diverse businesses to thrive, prioritizing adaptive reuse and preservation of historic buildings and facades, and enabling more density where appropriate to unlock new opportunities for housing, mixed-use growth, and businesses Downtown.”
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The block that was changed in the proposal was for New York-based Midwood Investment & Development's 23-story 11-21 Bromfield St. office building development. The proposal has gone through decades of hearings. The initial proposal in 2008 called for a 28-story tower, but that didn't advance, leading to the most recent version that was well above the 155-foot maximum. The Boston Preservation Alliance is strongly opposed to the tower, according to its website.
Pangaro — who led the development teams for the 685-foot Millennium Tower, the Ritz Carlton Hotel and Towers, and 10 St. James Ave. office tower while at Millennium Partners — said that pushing the height limits for new residential developments in the Ladder Blocks could be "disruptive to the rest of the fabric" of the neighborhood, paving the way for further unpredictability.
"That means the value of property adjacent to them changes in a way that encourages disinvestment, blight, demolition, parking lots,” he added.
The Architectural Team Project Manager Scott Maenpaa said he thinks the city should create incentives for developers “to come up with an interesting solution to this problem.”
"People don't want to lose the fabric of their communities," he said. "But moving forward, and more population growth, all that is a given. How do we do that tastefully?"
Blocks away in Chinatown, the neighborhood is seeing the opposite take place.
Plans for the smallest neighborhood in the city include cutting the maximum height for projects from 80 to 45 feet in an effort to fight displacement of residents and preserve its historic row houses that only stand three to four stories tall.
Jennifer Schultz, land use and permitting attorney at Nixon Peabody, said that the efforts are confusing and make it difficult for developers and investors to want to buy into the city.
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"It's a huge stick in the eye to development expectations and the possibility of renewed investment interest," Schultz said.
Just under five miles south, plans to demolish and redevelop White Stadium are facing similar backlash.
The initial proposal called for the rehabilitation of the 78-year-old stadium in Franklin Park for the National Women's Soccer League. The redevelopment, put forth by Boston Unity Soccer Partners, was initially expected to cost roughly $50M and would renovate the stadium and build out the surrounding areas.
Since it was first proposed in September 2023, the cost of the redevelopment jumped to roughly $200M, and the city last week began moving forward with demolition of the stadium, WBUR reported.
"We don't understand why the state continues to force this plan, this private partnership, down our throats when so many community members are against it," Jamaica Plain resident Melissa Hamel said at a city council hearing last week, according to WBUR. She described the White Stadium demolition as a “gut punch.”
The stadium has been in disrepair for decades but has a long history of gatherings, including Earth Wind & Fire and Sly and the Family Stone concerts and a major Black Panther rally in 1969.
Residents and preservationist groups like the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, which the stadium operates in, argue that the city hasn't listened to their concerns about the design and cost of the project.
"Our argument is that Franklin Park and White Stadium is public recreation land, and the city asserts that it is not," Emerald Necklace Conservancy President Karen Mauney-Brodek said.
While one historic property is being torn down, another has just achieved its landmark status.
Earlier this week, City Hall was granted historical landmark status by the Boston Landmark Commission. The structure has a history of polarization due to its unmistakable brutalist architecture, with former Mayor Menino even suggesting to sell the building and build a new City Hall at one point.
Nixon Peabody's Schultz said that the various preservation and zoning efforts from the city have left many developers confused as to what officials want.
"Why is it justifiable, or how could it be understood?" Schultz said. "How, in the same month, do we have White Stadium — a landmark — being demolished, City Hall, maybe the ugliest building in the world, being landmarked, Chinatown being downzoned and then the possibility of downtown office towers being upzoned?"