Monday night was a familiar scene for the 30-some people gathered at the Columbia Savin Hill Civic Association meeting. The monthly meeting gives residents a chance to get an update on the neighborhood’s goings-on and, perhaps most importantly, vet the flurry of development proposals working their way through an active northern hamlet within the city’s largest neighborhood.

On the agenda tonight: 57 Savin Hill Avenue. After a meeting with the association’s planning committee last month, the developers announced that they decided to scale back their proposed six unit residential development to four units, while keeping retail space, and to add on-site parking. They also pledge to address neighbors’ concerns about the building’s exterior. They think it looks too flat.

“Wow, thank you. That’s a huge concession to come down by two units after one meeting,” said Eileen Fenton, head of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association Planning Committee, which screens the development proposals that come through the civic association before they come before the larger group. Fenton was visibly surprised at the quick and painless letting-go of units to align with the association’s input.

“Thank you. We look forward to working with you,” said Jim Byrne, a former city councillor who represented Dorchester for 10 years and is now the lawyer representing the development team behind the project.

Everyone in the room Monday night knows development is booming in Dorchester, but not for just anyone. As nearly any developer, business owner, or politician in the city’s largest neighborhood can tell you, the key to unlocking development in Dorchester is not just about buying the land and finding the right architect.

You must secure the support of the local civic association.

“It makes it better for everyone to approach it that way,” Byrne told the Reporter. “The design has to be appropriately vetted and the result of a give-and-take. It’s not always something that is 100 percent satisfactory to the person proposing it and not 100 percent satisfactory to the community either. But the process gives a better project.”

Byrne, who has seen both sides of the issue from City Hall and now as a lawyer, added: “This thing can be an exercise in futility and can sometimes be very damaging if you don’t involve the community.”
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Three miles south in Lower Mills, developers and members of the community have been in a deadlock for the last year over a proposed mixed-use development at the former Molloy Funeral Home on Washington Street and four adjacent parcels.

Last summer, City Point Development proposed building a six-story apartment building with 50 units. Their plans prompted sharp push-back from local businesses and residents, including longtime Lower Mills Civic Association President Mike Skillin. The building’s height and density were vastly out of character for the neighborhood filled with two and three story commercial and residential spaces, Skillin said. The developers also never consulted with the community in the initial planning stages, he added.

The developers have since returned with revised plans, but the project remains at a reached a stalemate. The topic is on the agenda yet again at this evening’s Lower Mills Business Association, which has teamed with the civic assoiciation to become a key arbiter in what gets built in and around the village.

“Often the developer comes in and says he’s going to develop the parcel as he wants it,” said Skillin, who last month was elected to his 37th year as civic president. “But we stress that we have to live with it and it’s going to be something that the community and the abutters want and can live with.”

With a neighborhood used to weighing in on even the smallest-scale projects, large developers face a significant hurdle to build consensus. But they aren’t flying solo. They can and do get an assist from the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which helps guide a community process once a project notification form is formally filed with the city.

Catherine O’Neill, a Dorchester native and former City Hall liaison under Mayor Menino, is representing once such team of developers and architects right now. O’Neill is the public face of DOTBlock, which is poised to bring 420 units of housing and 68,000 square feet of retail space to a currently forlorn stretch of Dorchester Avenue: Glover’s Corner — where Freeport, Dot Ave. and Hancock Street converge.

O’Neill, a Lower Mills native who now lives in Savin Hill, is a veteran of the civic circuit. She understands the nuances of working with the community. Vetting each step of the process with the handful of community groups, civic associations, abutters, and stakeholders has been integral to the project’s success so far.

From the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s perspective, DOT Block’s team appears to be pursuing the community process correctly.

“A lot of developers, if they’re smart, they go out during pre-file stage and have conversations with civic groups, neighbors, abutters, and other people,” said Erico Lopez, director of development review and policy for the BRA. “That way, they’re bringing back information from the community. That’s also the role of mayor’s office and district city councilor’s office. They are all bringing to the table the pulse of the neighborhood.”

The BRA handles proposed developments differently depending on size. The larger the project, the more community input needed. If development deals with more than 50,000 square feet, the BRA Article 80 process kicks in for large projects, which has multiple touch-points of community input, Lopez said.

“The BRA is really trying to reform itself and turn itself into a more receptive agency. We’re going out and meeting with civic groups when we understand that there are these mega-projects coming down the pipe,” Lopez said, including DOT Block among those projects. “At the end of the day, there’s a lot of communication that is built into our process and a lot of comments from the community, but we’re in an unenviable position. We definitely take the consideration of the community at hand and we also have to take the overall growth of the city into consideration.”

Last year, Mayor Martin Walsh announced an initiative to see 53,000 new units of housing built in the city by 2030. Over the first three months of 2015 the city is on track— with 13,000 housing units now in construction, with 21,200 either permitted or in the pipeline.
Lopez added: “People just see us as a rubber stamp but a lot of people don’t see how many times we push back on the developers to re-work their plan to get them in line with the community’s wants and needs. We push back on developers every day.”
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One such example is the proposed Harmon Apartments near Ashmont Station. The proposed 39-unit residence would be build on the northern edge of the Boston Home campus— a well-respected institution for people suffering with advanced stages of multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases. The BRA recently extended the 30-day community comment period, required by the Article 80 process, after The Boston Home and members of the community were unable to come to a consensus about the building’s orientation and location along the Dorchester Avenue property.

Lopez, who has been at the BRA for nine years, said that type of comment period extension is normal and “all a part of doing business.”
“Maybe 20 percent of proposals go through the community process in 30 days,” he said. “Most projects have more than a 30 day process because it takes time. It’s not every day you see a development come through and have one community meeting and it’s done.”
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At Monday’s Columbia Savin Hill civic president, Eileen Boyle addressed the latest news on the real estate front: The Boston Globe had reported that of real estate mogul Gerald Chan had purchased the Russell Electric parcel, right across Dot Ave from DOT Block. Boyle reiterated that Chan had not made any moves to contact the civic association and would have to work through them for any development. It could be years, she said, before Chan decides to act on the Dot Ave. and Dewar Street parcel, if at all.

“Let’s face it, developers want to make money and most of what they build in our neighborhoods wouldn’t get past the first phase in their own towns,” Boyle told the Reporter after the meeting. “If the civic associations had more faith in the BRA who are hired to protect the neighborhoods and didn’t allow every square inch of land be developed without gold standards like green space, environmental products and solid building craftsmanship, we wouldn’t worry so much and wouldn’t sound like we are anti-development.”

That is not lost some, including O’Neill.

“Their major concern is the advancement and betterment of their neighborhood.

I respect their dedication and commitment to our neighborhood,” O’Neill told the Reporter.

As a liaison to Dorchester through Mayor Tom Menino’s office of neighborhood services in the ‘90s and as a current resident of Savin Hill, O’Neill has seen first-hand the impact civic groups can have.

“I’ve watched them, for decades, not respecting the community in the community process,” O’Neill said of developers in the area. “They might have more money than God, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, the civic groups and neighborhood and residents are a part of the process. They should be right at the table.”