Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee gains land

BRA map marking what is considered the boundaries of Dudley Square. Listed parcels include ones currently held and to be added to RSMPOC oversight.

The work of the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee may soon expand, as city officials recently announced that both large privately-held parcels and parcels held by the Department of Neighborhood Development in the Dudley area will be put under the committee’s purview.

The sentiment among some officials and Roxbury neighborhood representatives seems to be that now is the time to seize energy for development, before the opportunity to revitalize vacant parcels slips away, according to members of the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee.

“People keep saying that the economic uptick is not going to last very long, so take advantage of the next few years,” said Jorge Martinez, co-chair of the RSMPOC. “The city has been trying to ensure we move as many [parcels] as we can this cycle.”

City Councilor Tito Jackson, however, questioned expanding RSMPOC is the best way to proceed. He raised concerns that the move would give the BRA too much control over the disposition of Roxbury’s publicly-owned land and expand the RSMPOC’s scope beyond what the body was originally designed for.

The move gives RSMPOC oversight over private parcels of 50,000 square feet or more and over all publicly-owned parcels in what the city regards as the Dudley area for the purpose of its PLAN Dudley Square initiative, according to Nick Martin, communications director for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Specific parcels given to the RSMPOC under this change are 120-122 Roxbury Street, 2 Putnam Place, 116 Roxbury Street rear, Archer-Bonell, 75-81 Dudley Street and 40-50 Warren Street, Martin said. This gives DND parcels to RSMPOC as well as another BRA-held parcel.

John Barros, city chief of economic development, announced the expansion of oversight at the meeting.

The change is expected to go into effect within the next few months, according to Martinez.

Propelling Dudley planning

The RSMPOC’s new work in the area will be part of the city’s Dudley Square planning process and incorporated into Imagine Boston 2030. A sense of urgency around planning in Dudley spurred the decision to expand oversight.

“There’s a whole lot that’s got to be done, and we want to get these things in the ground before the cycle gets by us and we’re waiting another 10 or 12 or 15 years to make it happen,” said developer Frederick Fairfield, who joined the RSMPOC in January.

Greater scope has been a longtime request of the committee, and it recently signaled to the city that is prepared to take on more parcels, Martinez said.

“We’ve been making this request for some time now and gotten bits and pieces there and there. And now I think we’re ready to move forward quickly.”

Martinez said he is confident that the RSMPOC’s will move a few of its current parcels within the next several months. The RSMPOC originally was formed to handle 11 parcels; according to Fairfield, it currently holds eight parcels and will prioritize dispatching those.

The committee already has weighed in on the development of several large parcels, such as the Tropical Foods expansion on Parcel 10, Parcel 3 and Bartlett Place.

As of press time, Barros did not respond to questions on the decision to expand committee oversight and how many parcels would be included under the move.

Beefing up the RSMPOC

The RSMPOC is an all-volunteer committee, causing some to wonder if a large increase in parcels could overburden the group.

“Is the committee going to have the capacity for it to do the work?” asked activist and former City Councilor Chuck Turner. “That’s a concern around the issue.”

The BRA seems to be taking some steps to combat this: The agency recently hired one part-time worker to assist the RSMPOC on note-taking, data, research and their website, according to Martinez. The agency also plans to hire a full-time worker to perform assessments of economic feasibility for proposed projects.

Another resource that has worked with the RSMPOC in the past and will continue to do so is The American City Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to urban neighborhood revitalization. The organization prepares reports for the committee on best practices and assessments of particular aspects of a project proposal. One example: an evaluation of the economic viability and value of including a charter school at Bartlett place, Martinez said. RSMPOC co-chairs recently re-signed an agreement with TACC.

Five members also have joined the committee, filling some vacancies that have persisted for at more than a year, Turner said. The absences at times caused struggles to meet quorum.

Among the new members are Michael Curry, president of the NAACP’s Boston Branch; True-See Allah, director of the Suffolk county sheriff’s department house of corrections; Frederick Fairfield, president of the Dudley Business Merchants Association; Tony Hernandez, director of operations and stewardships for Dudley Neighbors Incorporated, a nonprofit that manages the Dudley Land Trust; and Marzuq Muhammad, a Roxbury resident.

BRA influence expands

Jackson expressed concerns over moving land from control of the DND — a city department — into control of a body tied to the BRA, a quasi-independent entity.

“It is very problematic that the planning that has occurred over past years will be swept into a BRA-run process,” he said. “It needs to be noted that the BRA, unlike the DND, is not a city department.”

Jackson also noted that RSMPOC was originally created to oversee parcels that mostly lie along Melnea Cass Boulevard.

“They were never structured or set up to deal with the whole of the Dudley Square area,” he said.

Which representatives?

The city’s plan comes as Jackson is in the midst of efforts to develop a neighborhood-driven process for planning in Roxbury and revive the long-dormant Roxbury Neighborhood Council — a city-sanctioned body created to ensure neighborhood residents have a say in development decisions

“It’s important that the people have the power to determine what happens on land in their community,” he said. “That’s why we have convened more than 300 people to discuss a project we call rebuild Roxbury. The first step is to re-establish the Roxbury Neighborhood Council to give people the governance structure to determine how land is disposed of, what purpose the land is used for and who the land will go to.”

Neighborhood councils — originally established in the 1980s — were made up of board of members elected by residents of the neighborhood the council represents. The Roxbury Neighborhood Council went defunct in the mid-1990s.

The RSMPOC is charged with ensuring development plans follow community priorities outlined in the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan; its duties include public outreach and coordinating public feedback.

In times of vacancy, members are appointed to the RSMPOC by the mayor, after community members or public officials recommend them to the mayor’s office and BRA, Fairfield said.

Turner recalled that at the latest RSMPOC meeting, Barros said the city did not make new outreach to officials for nominations to fill committee vacancies but instead appointed new members from a list of recommended names that been submitted previously.

Only seven of the fifteen members are Roxbury residents, according to the committee’s membership list. As state on RSMPOC’s website, its members are selected to represent “aspects of the Roxbury community” including merchant, neighborhood, religious, tenant and human services organizations and community development corporations, but no residency requirement is stated.

Fairfield — who resides in Canton — grew up in Roxbury and has been active in the area for decades. He said his past roles in the area include 20 years serving as president of Dudley Square Main Streets, several years on the Dudley Square visioning committee and as a renovator/developer of the old Roxbury’s Boys and Girls Club.

Yawu Miller contributed to
this article