BRA seeking to extend urban renewal status for Boston neighborhoods
Cities ongoing need for federally-sanctioned program
At A Glance
The BRA kicked off its public meeting process on March 31. The next two public meetings are scheduled for:
April 2 at 6:30 PM at the Blackstone Community Center
April 13 at 6:00 PM at Madison Park High School, Cardinal Hall
In the more than 60 years since Boston began using federal funds to level and redevelop neighborhoods, the term “urban renewal” has earned strong negative connotations due to the demolition of large swaths of the city’s residential core to make way for offices, parking garages and luxury apartment towers.
But BRA Director Brian Golden wants Bostonians to see urban renewal in its contemporary context — a tool that facilitates the growth of neighborhoods, not their destruction. The BRA is seeking the support of City Council and city residents before it formally asks the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development for permission to extend 14 of the 16 urban renewal plans expiring next year.
To obtain support, Golden is re-introducing Bostonians to the BRA.
“We’re not an elected body,” he said. “Our legitimacy, and the reason we’re still here, is because people believe the BRA has played a dispositive role in the creation of one of the great cities of the world.”
Like many in Roxbury, District 7 City Councilor Tito Jackson says he’s cognizant of the past pitfalls of urban renewal, which in the 1960s was responsible for the clearance of large residential swaths of Roxbury and the South End, both neighborhoods he represents.
“A lot of people have experienced the difficult parts of urban renewal,” he said. “We need to have a broader conversation about planning, displacement and gentrification.”
Jackson said urban renewal was one of many possible tools that could be used to facilitate the ongoing redevelopment of Roxbury, but cautioned that “community objectives need to come first, and the tools second.”
Golden acknowledges the uphill nature of the agency’s push, and is planning to request the urban renewal extension next year after the BRA has had time to make its case.
Boston has 18 urban renewal districts in total, 16 of which are set to expire this year after their last approval in 2005 for a ten-year period.
The city will allow two of the districts — located in Allston and part of Downtown — to expire because it says those development goals have been met. Although the other 14 were originally set to expire this year, the city received a one-year extension from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development in January to allow for the public process. The BRA intends to ask the DHCD for the ten-year extension in April 2016, following its solicitation of public input.
In the last go-around, the BRA took a radically different approach to renewing its urban renewal designations, meeting in secret with city councilors before the public caught wind of the plan.
That approach backfired when a Superior Court ruling found the meetings violated the Open Meeting Law. But the agency prevailed, gaining council support over the objections of the four people of color then seated on the council.
Transparency
This time around, Golden has made it clear that the BRA no longer operates in secret and is committed to a year-long public meeting process.
“Urban renewal” is a municipal land development program dating back to the 1949 Federal Housing Act granting cities various legal powers to facilitate development in areas deemed “blighted.” (The term “blighted” is a legal one and does not necessarily mean “dilapidated.” For instance, Boston’s waterfront fits the technical definition because it has a high water table.) The program historically has courted controversy because of heavy-handed use of urban renewal tools — particularly eminent domain — to clear out working-class neighborhoods, many of which were mostly immigrant or black, in favor of new development. In the 1960s, novelist James Baldwin coined the term “Negro Removal” as a stand-in for “Urban Renewal” in protest of the destruction that the heavy-handed planning process often wrought on black urban communities.
Golden, however, insists that eminent domain is used today to facilitate development that benefits neighborhoods, citing projects that benefited from eminent domain powers such as the Whittier Street Health Center and the Bolling Building. Officials are careful to clarify, however, that while today’s eminent domain usually involves a “friendly negotiation” with the current property owner, the Bolling Building purchase was not friendly and ended up involving litigation.
BRA officials also point to another urban renewal tool – Urban Renewal Overlay Districting – that a Roxbury project recently used to apply for federal funding. The Boston Housing Authority applied along with the city and Madison Park Development Corporation in February for $30 million in federal housing funding for the Whittier neighborhood. BRA officials told the Banner that after meeting with community stakeholders about the kind of project they wanted, it used its legal authority to modify the zoning rules accordingly. BRA officials say that this kind of streamlining will make the overall application more attractive
to federal funders. (The decision on the Whittier grant will be announced in September.)
Most people view Boston’s earlier uses of urban renewal as disastrous, particularly in the West End, where thousands of working-class people were displaced in the 1950s. Tenements were replaced by a new highway, housing was turned into luxury high rises, and new government and commercial buildings were erected, including Government Center.
Engagement
BRA officials are fully aware of the uphill battle they face in convincing Bostonians to trust the agency’s newest urban renewal plans. BRA Director Brian Golden stresses his roots in Allston, a neighborhood that also once faced widespread housing demolition at the hand of the BRA. Although he is too young to have directly lived through the process, Golden says he grew up with a strong understanding of the ways in which a strongly prescriptive approach to city planning could negatively impact neighborhoods.
Roxbury resident Joyce Stanley, who heads the Dudley Square Main Streets organization, still recalls the days when Roxbury and South End residents referred to the program as “Negro removal.” Stanley says she isn’t convinced by the BRA’s insistence that the agency has turned a page under Golden’s leadership.
“It’s always a different person,” she said. “They have a bigger plan for our neighborhood. I’ve lived through it a few times and I’ve seen it.”
Others raised concerns about the ability of community groups to stop urban renewal plans they did not like. State Rep. Byron Rushing said he would like to see more community control over development before the BRA is given the broad powers that come with their mandate. The BRA currently relies on Impact Advisory Groups and existing neighborhood organizations, like the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee, to gage community support for development projects, but, as Rushing points out, there is no city or federal regulation that gives those groups the power to stop a project they oppose.
“The federal law does not allow for any significant community involvement,” he said. “So they set up committees and do what they want to do. The committees don’t have the power to stop a development from moving forward.”
When asked by the Banner about the influence that community groups played in the process, Golden said that while the BRA will strive for community buy-in, the agency must remain free to make decisions that are politically unpopular if the agency determines it will serve the greater long-term good.
Some other community reactions remained cautiously optimistic. Jeanne Pinado, Executive Director of Madison Park Development Corporation, pointed to some of the positive outcomes that can come from urban renewal, including the conversion of the Ferdinand building into the Bolling building.
However, Pinado is clear that she is not completely on board with the BRA’s plans yet, either.
“It sounds like they’re soliciting feedback,” she says. “I guess that a good place to start. It’s important to get engaged, and it’s too early to form an opinion about whether this is the right way to do city planning.”
