The owner of a “historically significant” home on Minot Street filed plans with the city of Boston on Tuesday for a controversial re-development project that would keep the existing home intact and add an additional 24 units of housing in new buildings on the lot.
The proposal, which has already drawn sharp opposition from neighbors who surfaced information about the early stages of the plan last summer, will be the subject of an official city of Boston Planning Dept. meeting on April 8. It will also be the subject of a joint meeting of the Cedar Grove Civic Association and Popes Hill Neighborhood Association on March 25 at the Leahy Holloran Community Center.
According to Tuesday’s filing, the project calls for “the renovation and rear physical expansion of the Hammond House, while preserving the historical structure, along with the construction of a new building on each side of the existing structure, creating 24 additional units of housing serving various household sizes and income levels, including 4 Inclusionary Zoning units.”
The 24,670 sq. ft. site at 39 Minot Street (above) is owned by James A. Paskell through a LLC. The new buildings, if approved, would be four stories in height, according to the document.
“Through sensitive adaptive reuse of the existing Hammond House, a circa 1830 Federal/Greek Revival structure, combined with contextually appropriate new construction, this development exemplifies the balanced approach to growth that Boston needs to address its housing crisis while maintaining neighborhood character,” the filing argues.
But neighbors who first flagged their opposition to the emerging plans last July have serious concerns about the density and scale of the proposal.
Ray and Lauren Hanley, who live directly across the street from the potential development, told the Reporter last year that “the development team and the City have held multiple meetings, discussions, and interdepartmental reviews during this year-long ‘pre-file’ phase without disclosing the active planning effort to the community or releasing project details to abutters, which demonstrates a lack of transparency.”
Boston City Councillor John FitzGerald, who represents Minot Street constituents, said that he’s not in favor of the proposal filed on Tuesday.
“It appears to me that this developer does not have the best interest of the community in mind,” FitzGerald said in a statement. “There are fewer and fewer pockets of neighborhoods across the entire city that can cater to truly providing a residential tight-knit neighborhood that lends itself to a family atmosphere. By coming in and proposing 26 apartment style units on a former single family lot with beautiful open space, it threatens the character of the neighborhood, a character that is generations in the making.
FitzGerald added: “I can predict for the most part these units get bought up and rented out to a highly transient population that does not care about the overall well-being of the neighborhood or the families that put roots down here.”
The joint civic association meeting planned for March 25 at the Leahy-Holloran center at 7 p.m. is open the public. The city’s Planning Dept. website has posted a notice for a public meeting on April 8.
Read more about this proposal here.
