BRA to begin Bartlett yard
development
Yawu Miller
For decades dozens of MBTA buses belched diesel exhaust and leaked
oil late into the night while waiting for repairs at the Bartlett
Street yard.
Within the next two years, the yard could see as many as 400 units
of affordable housing developed there. Or a mix of affordable and
market-rate housing, retail and light manufacturing.
What developers ultimately build on the MBTA-owned lot depends largely
on what community residents decide in a process that will begin
Nov. 21 with a community planning meeting sponsored by the Boston
Redevelopment Authority.
“We want to go into this with an open mind and look at it
with an eye toward housing,” said BRA project manager Hugues
Monestine.
An open mind may be an important asset for the BRA, given the often
competing visions of development for the Roxbury area. While the
Roxbury Master Plan has targeted the Bartlett Street yard, which
occupies an entire city block, as a space for housing, the Dudley
Square Main Streets organization is advocating mixed income housing
in an mixed use development.
The notion of packing as many as 400 units into the space represents
outmoded thinking about housing, according to Main Streets Director
Joyce Stanley.
“It’s ridiculous,” Stanley said of the notion
of building a dense development. “It would be like the old
projects.”
Stanley said she would like to see housing units clustered around
the edge of the parcel, which is bounded by Washington, Guild, Bartlett
and Lambert streets.
“We would like to bring jobs and amenities to the area,”
she said. “Now that there’s a large space there, it
could be made into a community of its own.”
Aside from Main Streets and the Roxbury Master Plan, there has been
no major input on the development of the former bus yard.
At the November 21 meeting, the BRA will begin the process of soliciting
input on the request for proposals which will be used to solicit
developers.
First, the Roxbury Master Plan Oversight Committee will make recommendations
for the RFP. After the RFP is developed, Roxbury residents will
have the opportunity to review proposals.
So far, no developers have expressed interest in the parcel.
“Nobody has actually come out, partly because nobody knows
when the RFP is coming out and nobody knows what kind of remediation
has to be done with the site,” said Roxbury Neighborhood Council
member Patricia Courtney.
The Bartlett Street yard, originally designed as a trolley storage
facility, has long been thought to have contamination from waste
oil and petro-chemicals, but testing on the site has not yet been
conducted.
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