IN JANUARY, Boston planning officials unveiled a new zoning proposal for a large area of the city’s downtown, a proposal that would dramatically alter the size and scale of permissible buildings within one block of Boston Common and the Public Garden. Under this proposed new zoning, luxury residential towers as tall as 500 feet – or about 50 stories – would be allowed, as a matter “of right” with no city review of a blanket increase to that height.  

This proposal, dubbed PLANdowntown, would permit these towers in a large part of the historic area that fronts the Common called the Ladder Blocks, which are the seven short blocks that run between Washington and Tremont Streets facing the Common. This new tower zone would be extended to also include Park Plaza, an area that turns and runs further along the Common and Public Garden between Boylston and Stuart streets. 

Fortunately, Mayor Wu recently proposed a virtuous delay in this PLANdowntown process –welcome news as history has taught us that urban growth and change must not come at the expense of quality of life. Citizen groups anxiously await a more inclusive and thoughtful planning process as part of the mayor’s commitment, one that is hoped to begin in earnest in  April. 

The idea that 500-foot towers would be allowed in proximity to the city’s historic and iconic downtown parks has produced very significant public pushback because it would dramatically change the city’s scale and loom over existing parks and historic buildings. This would also give an immediate and irretrievable windfall benefit to developers without providing any well-defined public benefits. It would likely lead to building demolition throughout, and also upend the 30-year stability of the Park Plaza area that was previously established with very definite building parameters specifically designed to hold back this kind of out-of-scale development.  

The proposed rezoning in PLANdowntown suggests that we have not learned from a battle that played out 50 years ago, a showdown that offers some lessons in history that we’d do well to heed, rather than be doomed to repeat it. 

The dramatically greater density that would be allowed by the city’s January zoning plan is quite destructive because it makes the value of land higher than the value of the existing buildings upon it. This encourages existing owners to just sit on their properties without signing leases or making repairs as they wait and speculate on this new high-rise potential.  

The buildings impacted are irreplaceable parts of the downtown that Bostonian’s identify as part of our city. They include the Old Corner Book Store, the Boston Five Cents Savings Bank and the Jewelers’ Building, among many others, The proposed zoning changes are likely to encourage massive demolition (also reducing real estate taxes) with no incentive to repurpose existing structures even though they have significant structural, aesthetic, or historic value.  

The new PLANdowntown’s proposed zoning naively supposes that increased building densities and heights will cause responsible investment. It presumes that there is a public purpose justification in developing new luxury towers everywhere, while it virtually ignores the need for low- and middle-income housing. Furthermore, it does not directly drive the rehabilitation of existing structures; rather, it destabilizes land economics at the expense of lower existing buildings, including those constructed or restored in recent decades.  
 
The PLANdowntown zoning proposal and today’s negative public reaction to it is quite similar to the Park Plaza controversy of the 1970s. At the time, the Boston Redevelopment Authority proposed a similar radical increase in permitted density to heights of 450+ feet in the blocks between Boylston and Stuart streets, also adjacent to Boston Common and the Public Garden. 

The proposal then was justified by the BRA as a necessary “opportunity to jump-start” real estate development in an area that was in danger of being overtaken by crime in an expansion of that era’s Combat Zone. These are the same words we are hearing again today, arguments that have to do with crime and drug use in the area without a full consideration of the city that would be radically altered in its physical form.   

Citizens vigorously opposed that 1970 plan, and rallied to the cry that the towering, Manhattan-style buildings proposed would cause damaging shadow impacts to the use of Boston Common and the Public Garden, thus degrading the most loved parks in the city. Correctly anticipating the creation of an antiseptic, “Manhattanized” neighborhood with no connection to the historic nature of the area, community groups and park advocates generated dramatic and effective opposition.  

The Commonwealth then used a little-known state approval power to reject that BRA plan, in large part because the BRA had not prepared a proper environmental impact report on its proposal (notably, there is no such analysis in PLANdowntown today, either). The resulting impasse set the stage for a new plan to be developed, one prepared by working to find consensus with community members and the state, all in full compliance with Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act procedures. 

This subsequent Park Plaza planning successfully converted a very controversial BRA idea into a productive and sustainable neighborhood.  Height and density limits in the area were strictly controlled to make clear that there would be no exceptions in the form of zoning variances or other “spot zoning” dispensations, signaling that property owners should invest in compliance with expressed height limits.   

A law partially governing shadows upon the parks was also passed (though it has proven to be insufficient because of limitations in the seasonal periods it controls, and because it can and has been amended).  

The transformation that followed included: construction of the Massachusetts Transportation Building; development of the Four Seasons Hotel and Condominium, the Heritage on the Garden and One Charles condominiums; renovation of the Paine Furniture Building and Park Plaza Hotel; restoration of the Majestic and Colonial theaters, and the Little Building (the latter three by Emerson College); and revised and renewed urban infrastructure including improved streets and parks.  

Since that time, we have witnessed successful redevelopment elsewhere in this area of downtown: restoration and functional modernization of the Opera House, Paramount, and Modern theaters; construction of Millennium Tower, which preserved the historic Filene’s department store building; development of the mid-rise Millennium Place condominium; creation of the Godfrey Hotel from older office buildings; and modernization of the Parker House and nearby structures ringing downtown’s historic cemeteries.  

In addition, the conversion of older Ladder Blocks buildings into less expensive housing has begun at 44 Bromfield Street and on Hamilton Place, for student housing at 101 Tremont Street, and already completed affordable housing at the YMCA building on Boylston Street.  In each of these cases, careful planning was informed by an understanding of the inherent worth of many historic buildings and has resulted in increased economic value and tax revenues — all with strong public support.  

These outcomes were possible because there was a working process that recognized problems and solved for agreed upon outcomes. Planners combined policy goals in zoning with well identified public benefits. Contrast this with recent Boston Planning Department thinking that an autopilot, “as-of-right” zoning amendment in PLANdowntown would magically work by transferring valuable property rights (created by up-zoning) to private developers without any conditions other than the creation of luxury towers. 

There is hope that we will have learned from the Park Plaza saga, and I do have faith in the mayor’s proposed re-engagement in this PLANdowntown process. I also look forward to a concomitant reset of PLANdowntown, one that truly encourages rehabilitation of older buildings and their conversion to more affordable housing.  

Instead of high-rise luxury housing, we should aim for programs that transfer increases in value to historic buildings or to sites that can accommodate affordable housing in configurations that are less expensive to build.   

Downtown citizens believe that a well-run public process would lead to a consensus, one that unlocks the latent value in the historic Ladder Blocks through a deliberate incentivizing of building rehabilitation. It would include stabilization of the Ladder Blocks and Park Plaza with easily described and sensible zoning height limits; and could include a required coupling of the proposed new SKY-HIGH Financial District zoning (a new city proposed zone deeper within the Financial District) with funds for building conversion into more affordable housing inside the Ladder Blocks.  

Any plan would also logically call for state investment to upgrade the very center of the MBTA rapid transit system at Park Street, Downtown Crossing, Boylston, State, and Chinatown stations to support a growing downtown. 

This can all be accomplished by City Hall if it embarks upon a reciprocal, interactive process with the public, including residents, park and historic property advocates, landowners, and the state. Together we can identify a path forward that can build on models of past success, We all believe that the city we love can survive this moment of déjà vu all over again.  

Anthony Pangaro, a downtown Boston resident, is an architect and real estate developer whose projects included Millennium Place, Millennium Tower, and the restoration of the Filene’s building on Washington Street; the Four Seasons Hotel and Condominium and One Charles Condominium at Park Plaza; and restoration of the Paine Furniture Building on Arlington Street. His firm, Millennium Partners, also played an important role in preserving the Opera House and Paramount theaters. He is part of a coalition of 15 neighborhood organizations that are seeking input in the revised PLANdowntown zoning proposal now being developed. 

The post In downtown Boston rezoning, let’s not repeat mistakes of the past appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.

IN 1972, Republican Gov. Francis W. Sargent confronted the question of whether to perpetuate a decades-old plan to run the I-95 highway through Boston neighborhoods, or to adopt a forward-looking, community-inspired plan that swept away outdated ideas. It took courage for the governor to abandon the obsolete notion of building an elevated interstate through Roxbury and Jamaica Plain and instead to invest in environmentally sensitive infrastructure that would encourage economic development along the Southwest Corridor.

Sargent and his secretary of transportation, Alan Altshuler, found a way to pay for that plan and rebuild failing roads and rail facilities in those neighborhoods with federal and state public funds.

Today’s pending reconstruction of I-90 now looming over Boston’s Allston neighborhood presents an uncanny opportunity to do the same good. Our governor faces the equivalent question of whether to perpetuate a decades-old idea – a highway viaduct built above an urban community – or to seize, as Sargent did, the exciting alternative put forward by private citizens. The Allston project would open the door to a similar 50-year economic development plan and new parkland, forever reclaiming a critical part of Boston for the benefit of the region.

In both cases, major universities benefit from a new public-oriented plan, and so they should – along with every other citizen of Boston. Northeastern University in the Southwest Corridor in the 1970s, and Harvard and Boston University today in Allston, have long served their different communities as cornerstone educational institutions. They have expended their own funds to reclaim fallow, post-industrial lands and hold them for more productive public-oriented purposes.

Harvard’s cost in acquiring railroad freight yards and related industrial rights in Allston was substantial and will be increased by its $58 million commitment to help the Commonwealth pay for the new West Station. To expect Harvard to also bear the cost of rebuilding I-90 or more of the passenger railroad that serves the public at-large is to overstate the obligations of any private university and to ask it to do the work of a public agency.

At the beginning of 2021, as our new president proposes major investment in national infrastructure, it is unthinkable that the Commonwealth would repeat highway design mistakes made in the 1960s, or even suggest rebuilding an elevated highway adjacent to the Charles River and above one of the last major undeveloped parcels in Boston.

Belief in a common public good was at the heart of Sargent’s transformative decision. The Commonwealth’s responsibility for that good should not be disregarded by calling it the obligation of a university land owner. The history of the Southwest Corridor Project surely shows that the creation of public good is the duty of government.

Anthony Pangaro, who retired as head of Millennium Partners-Boston, was the director of the Southwest Corridor Project from 1973 to 1980.  Kenneth Kruckemeyer is a partner at Strategies for Cities and was assistant director/director of the Southwest Corridor Project from 1973 to 1982.

The post Baker faces same choice Sargent did in 1972 appeared first on CommonWealth Beacon.