Developers present plans for Parcel P-3

Toussaint Losier

Nearly three hundred local residents, labor activists, and city officials attended a public hearing last week on the development proposals for Parcel P-3, the largest plot of vacant land in Roxbury.

Outside the packed Boston Water and Sewage Commission conference room, a half dozen youth from Madison Park handed out buttons and carried “Develop for Housing” and “More Opportunities for Youth Residents” signs. Inside, audience members sat or stood through several hours of presentations from three competing development teams.

Ruggles Place, a joint effort by the National Center for Afro American Artists’ and developer Thomas Welch, relies on 300 housing units and 300,000 square feet of office, educational, and medical space to subsidize the construction and operation of both a museum gallery and the Elma Lewis Performing Arts School. In contrast, Madison Park Community Development Corporation and Trinity Financial are sponsoring Tremont Center, a project offering four commercial buildings and 111 affordable and market-rate housing units, while also leveraging 1,200-student dormitory leased to Northeastern to subsidize a business assistance and employment resource center.

Taylor Smith properties and Weston Associates’ Heritage Commons offers 320,500 square feet for small business and major retailers, along with a hotel, office and housing space, and a home for the New England Jazz Center. Each proposal also offers an expanded location for the Whittier Street Health Center and educational opportunities for medical health careers.

Located on the corner of Whittier and Tremont Streets, across from the Boston Police Headquarters, this eight-acre site has been largely vacant since the city’s Urban Renewal demolished homes and factories there in the 1960s. As the first of seven publicly owned parcels in the Roxbury Master Plan to be redeveloped, Parcel P-3 has attracted much public attention.

For many in the audience, this was their first chance to hear each proposal fully explained. Pamela Taylor, a former Roxbury resident, found herself slightly swayed after hearing the first presentation. “Heritage Commons has less housing and more retails, more opportunities for wealth generation because of the retail and the hotel,” she said. “Tremont has more housing but mainly for Northeastern students.”

Klare Allen, a local resident and community activist, said she opposed the Tremont Center because of its inclusion of college student housing. “There is a twenty year agreement against Northeastern building on this side of Tremont and that agreement should stay in place,” she said. “Plus, how are they going to provide housing for Northeastern students when there are residents in Roxbury who need housing now? Northeastern students have already caused trouble in Mission Hill and the Fenway. They are out there, not abiding by the law, drinking late at night, jumping off of buildings and what not.”

Cassandra Jones said she was impressed by Heritage Commons. “I can invest through the community equity partners program,” she said. “There is also an entrepreneurial training program.”

“I think it should be the one with the youth jobs,” offered Corey Jeremiah, one of the students supporting the Tremont Center. An employee from the Whittier Street Health Clinic described the plans for Ruggles Place as her favorite.

Heated discussion of the proposals flared up briefly during the question and answer period. After two successive union officials demanded to know if construction jobs would be all union, Lorraine Fowlkes received loud applause when she asked, “What mechanism is there to ensure that unions will even bring in community residents?”

Roxbury Oversight Committee member Donovan Walker moderated the meeting and was encouraged by the large turnout. Committee member and Whittier Street Tenant Association leader Maurice Sequeira described the event as “beautiful, but lopsided.”

“You have your union folks looking for jobs, others supporting Madison Park High School in the back,” he said. “Each proposal has their own little group. Whittier Street Tenants have been fighting for 18 years to get a supermarket or laundry next door. Each project here is pursuing its own agenda, partnering with colleges like Northeastern or RCC, but none of them are reflecting our interests at Whittier and we are the direct abutters. None of these people live in the area.”

“I would like to see something that responds to the needs of the 200 families in Whittier Street,” he said. “It feels like they are pushing us out. The housing is outdated. We are the direct abutters and they are trying to push us out. We want a guarantee that we won’t be relocated. And for developers to put money into our buildings so that we can stay there.”

None of the presentations directly addressed how their proposals would ensure that Whittier Street tenants would not be displaced. Moreover, Trinity Financial, the owner and developer of Mass Pike Towers in Chinatown, has recently become embroiled in a controversy with tenants there over plans to rebuild several towers, replacing existing affordable housing units with mostly market rate or luxury condos.

Alice Leung, an organizer with the Chinese Progressive Association, said the proposals marks the third time in three years that Trinity has sought to replace the Mass Pike Towers with new buildings.

Representatives from Trinity Financial did not return calls for comment.