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April 21, 2005
NU delays dormitory projects
Jeremy Schwab
Neighbors and elected officials won a temporary victory last week
in their struggle to keep Northeastern University from building
two new dormitories in Lower Roxbury and the Fenway.
Representatives of the university and the Boston Redevelopment
Authority agreed to extend the deadline for filing a project notification
plan from this month until January, 2006, bowing to the request
of a Community Task Force appointed by Mayor Thomas Menino to
advise Northeastern on development plans.
Between now and January, the BRA, the university and task force
members will discuss alternative locations for the dormitories,
said BRA spokeswoman Meredith Baumann.
“New sites will be discussed,” she said. “All
of the sites, including the ones being proposed, will be discussed.”
City Councilor Chuck Turner, an ex-officio member of the task
force who initially proposed the deadline be delayed until September,
said he was pleased with the delay and the promises for further
dialogue.
“I think it is a very helpful move, so there can be more
in-depth examination of the alternative locations for the two
new dormitories,” he said.
Abutters worry that the dormitories would add to the number of
Northeastern students intruding on their neighborhoods. In Lower
Roxbury, the Davenport Commons, which includes 75 units of affordable
housing and 585 beds for Northeastern students, was built in 2001
between Columbus and Tremont streets. The Coventry Street dormitory
approved last September also brings more students to the Lower
Roxbury neighborhood.
One of the two recently proposed dormitories would be built on
what is now a parking lot sandwiched between the Carter Playground
and the MBTA’s Orange Line subway tracks. Its three sections
would rise to seven, nine and 20 stories high, the sections becoming
higher as they move further back from the playground.
The other dormitory, in the Fenway, would rise 12 stories, said
Turner, and would be built near the residential Gainsborough Street
area. Proposals call for the Lower Roxbury dormitory to house
705 students, and the Fenway dorm to house 855.
Northeastern officials decided on the dorm locations after it
was discovered that Northeastern had been illegally operating
dormitories in the Fenway area. In a memorandum of understanding
with the city, the officials promised to build 1,250 new units
of on-campus student housing.
Local residents and activists have complained for years that Northeastern’s
off-campus housing encroaches on their neighborhoods. They say
the students bring noise and sometimes illegal behavior into residential
areas and drive up housing prices because landlords realize they
can charge more for the same space if they rent to four students
rather than one family.
While the proposed new dormitories are part of the university’s
ongoing efforts to build more on-campus housing, local residents
complain that the locations of new dormitories are at the border
of residential communities.
“Having another building will just cause more sleepless
nights,” said Columbus Ave. resident Rose Arruda. “The
[Davenport Commons] have created an atmosphere of ‘student
alley’ on my street. From Thursday through the weekend,
students just pile out of the dorms because they can’t party
in the dorms. Then they go up and down our street until 3 or 4
a.m. raising havoc.”
A Northeastern spokesman said the entries to the proposed building
would be located away from the playground to funnel students toward
the main area of campus, back across the railroad tracks. The
spokesman, Fred McGrail, argued that the proposed sites would
allow Northeastern to build more quickly, furthering the university’s
long-term plan to house more students on campus.
“The neighbors have asked for additional residence housing
to be built,” said McGrail. “They had requested residence
halls be built quickly. These sites were virtually the only undeveloped
land Northeastern has available to it.”
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