![No master plan for Roxbury’s vacant land No master plan for Roxbury’s vacant land](https://baystatebanner.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Vancant_Land_Jackson.jpg)
With the administration of Mayor Martin Walsh planning to increase the city’s housing stock by 53,000 units over the next 15 years, real estate developers and abutters are eying the city’s store of vacant land.
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City officials count more than 300 vacant parcels of land in Roxbury, including this plot at 280 Warren Street.
For developers, the vacant parcels represent an opportunity to cash in on the city’s overheated housing market. For abutters, the prospect of new housing often presents challenges posed by increased traffic and density, decreased parking and competing visions of what kind of housing best fits each neighborhood.
With the lion’s share of vacant land in the city, Roxbury is likely to see more conflict between developers and neighborhood residents than anywhere else in the city.
According to data provided by the Department of Neighborhood Development, there are currently 378 city-owned land plots in Roxbury, comprising a total of 1.57 million square feet. Of these, 180 land plots comprising 736,486 square feet are in some stage of disposition — meaning the city is actively working to release them for development.
Yet in Roxbury, there is no coordinated planning to determine the best mix of housing and open space, or determine how new development will affect traffic and parking.
For Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association Chairman Louis Elisa, the coming development boom represents somewhat of a challenge.
“There is no vision,” he said. “There has not been a unified planning process for all of the vacant lots in Roxbury.”
Plans in the making
This year the Boston Redevelopment Authority will launch a comprehensive city-wide planning effort. But at the current pace, housing production is way ahead of neighborhood planning.
The Department of Neighborhood Development’s quarterly report on the housing plan issued in April showed that 21,100 of the 53,000 units have already been permitted or approved — meaning about half of the planned developments have already found a spot in the city.
“It’s been the priority of the mayor to put back into economic use the properties [we have],” Sheila Dillon, director of the DND, said in a phone call with the Banner. She noted that land plots that are shed from the city’s inventory can then build the city’s tax base as developers put them to use. Dillon said the city does not have a specific date by which they are aiming to finish the disposition process, but that the process is “continual.” When one land plot is disposed of, another is put up for grabs. She said she hopes the city can empty its holdings of usable land in two to three years.
City Councilor Tito Jackson acknowledges the city’s need to develop more housing.
“One of the reasons housing prices are going up is because there’s not enough supply,” Jackson said. He advocates a mix that is one-third affordable housing, one-third so-called ‘workforce’ or moderate income housing, and one-third market-rate housing to create stability in Roxbury. But absent a neighborhood-wide planning process, there is no agreement on what mix of affordability should go into new units in the neighborhood.
“A completed planning effort would unlock our housing potential, our workforce and economic development potential, and our transportation potential,” he said. “The only way this works is to look at Roxbury as a whole, rather than a parcel-by-parcel basis.”
Neighborhood of opportunity
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The city has 21,000 units of housing in the development pipeline. Much of Boston’s recent housing development has been in luxury towers, like the Millennium Tower being constructed on the former Filene’s site in Downtown Crossing.
City data shows Roxbury to have significantly more vacant land — 1.57 million square feet — than other neighborhoods. Mattapan, East Boston and Dorchester have the next largest amounts of available city-owned land, at 1.52 million, 1.41 million and 1.39 million square feet, respectively. A comparable neighborhood in terms of urbanity — South Boston — has only 49,000 square feet available.
Taking only developable land into account, Roxbury remains at the top of the list, with Mattapan, Dorchester and East Boston not far behind.
Meanwhile, construction continues apace. Dudley Square is being redeveloped with new housing and office space. In Jackson Square, developers are in the midst of building out residential, retail and office space projects. Housing projects large and small are in various stages of planning and development.
And yet, there has been no comprehensive planning on traffic or parking for Roxbury.
In the past, Roxbury residents, city officials and representatives of institutions in Roxbury collaborated on a Roxbury Strategic Master Plan, which was released in 2004. Councilor Jackson says the master plan was too limited in scope to provide guidelines for neighborhood-wide development.
“The Roxbury Strategic Master Plan’s purview is really in Dudley Square and Melnea Cass Boulevard,” he said. “We need something that will go from Grove Hall, to Dudley, to lower Roxbury.”
Nick Martin, spokesperson for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, acknowledged that there were some limitations to current planning processes, but said there still was a good foundation in place on which to improve.
“While it’s true that the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan applies only to parcels where the BRA has an ownership stake, I wouldn’t want to diminish the value of that plan,” he said via email to the Banner. “It has led to a vision for the redevelopment of many crucial parcels in the neighborhood, several of which are underway at the moment.”
Martin pointed as examples to the new Tropical Foods building, redevelopment at Bartlett Yards and a recent federal grant for the Whittier Street housing development.
But Martin acknowledged that the Strategic Master Plan only covers a portion of the neighborhood.
“[The] point about the lack of a single community-wide plan is a good one, and it speaks to Mayor Walsh’s desire to do more comprehensive planning in general,” Martin said. “The issue isn’t unique to Roxbury, and that’s what makes the ongoing citywide planning effort (i.e. Imagine Boston 2030) so important.”
Parcel-by-parcel approach
By the Numbers
City data shows Roxbury to have significantly more vacant land than other neighborhoods:
1.57 million: Square feet of vacant land in Roxbury
1.52 million: Square feet of vacant land in Mattapan
1.41 million: Square feet of vacant land in East Boston
1.39 million: Square feet of vacant land in Dorchester
49,000 Square feet of vacant land in South Boston
378 There are currently 378 city-owned land plots in Roxbury, comprising a total of 1.57 million square feet. Of these, 180 land plots comprising 736,486 square feet are in some stage of disposition.
Currently, the Department of Neighborhood Development decides which of its plots to put up for bidding based on local interest and whether the current real estate market would support privately-financed development. The DND then puts out a Request for Proposals (RFP), and developers submit their project proposals. Qualified proposals go on to receive community feedback.
The process generally ensures that community residents have the opportunity to weigh in on projects before they’re built. But absent a neighborhood-wide plan, development in Roxbury tends to piecemeal, with developers executing radically different ideas, often without regard for the impacts on traffic and density.
In the Highland Park section of Roxbury, residents demanded the city put a moratorium on disposition of city-owned land while residents come up with a master plan for the neighborhood.
“There are roughly seven acres of land in a very small neighborhood,” said neighborhood resident Rodney Singleton in a conversation with the Banner. “We need a master plan for these remaining parcels.”
Singleton said that because there is no active Roxbury Neighborhood Council to do the kind of desired community-led planning, the smaller neighborhood groups and project review committees lack resources and information.
“They’re kind of on their own,” he said of the smaller civic groups. “When they take a vote on a project, they don’t have a standard way to articulate their views to the city.”
Yawu Miller contributed to this article.