Hey, there! Log in / Register
Court clears way for BC expansion and upholds the way the BRA does business
By adamg on Wed, 10/09/2013 - 12:02pm
The Massachusetts Appeals Court today upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by three Brighton residents against a major expansion plan by Boston College.
In their suit, residents said the BRA was a "quasi judicial" body and therefore violated the state constitution in approving a 10-year, $1.6-billion "institutional master plan" by holding private discussions with college officials and not swearing in people testifying in public on the proposal or letting the residents cross-examine anybody who testified. The result of the BRA process was changes to the city zoning code, which were then approved by the Boston Zoning Commission.
But the state's second-highest court said that the Boston process for approving these large plans - by changing the city zoning code - was more legislative than judicial, that, in fact, the state Legislature created the BRA in 1956 in part to develop novel approaches to dealing with the " unique land use problems" in the state's "capital and its largest city." The process makes the BRA and zoning commission fundamentally different from the planning and zoning boards in other communities, which are tasked with a court-like role of interpreting existing state and local laws, the court said.
The standards and procedures required to amend the Boston zoning code and approve IMPs are the same, and implicate long-term governmental policy questions. As such, they are distinct from the standards and procedures for granting variances or special permits.
The court added:
The plaintiffs also allege that the process was largely the result of communications between the BRA, the zoning commission, the mayor's office, and BC, which occurred outside the public hearing process and without the opportunity for rebuttal by the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs, however, point to no requirement that the public hearings be conducted on the record as adversarial proceedings.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
frivolous lawsuit by NIMBYs
So... it appears that no one attended the early meetings, and then once things got too far along was when people started realizing they didn't like what was happening.
If you want to have an impact on these sorts of projects, show up at ALL the hearings, bug your city councilor, and talk to the BRA's neighborhood rep. It's not some sort of secret process.
Makes absolutely no difference
The BRA does whatever it wants. A friend of mine said that someone once told her that their job is to make the illegal legal (usually by declaring an area blighted - they are the legal but certainly not moral authority on blight - then they can do pretty much anything including taking the land by eminent domain).
Another example - I went to the one and only public hearing on granting State Street a tax break to move some operations to South Boston and testified against giving them the break. I think the total was $10 mm or less - a fraction of a rounding error for State Street who was making billions in profits. With or without the break, they were making the move anyway - it represented a huge savings for them. On top of that they were under active investigation for allegedly defrauding the state and city pension system - not sure if that's been resolved, but to the best of my knowledge active at the time. The BRA board cut off my testimony and voted unanimously to give them the tax break. Why?
Bottom line - the money is too big. The mayor determines what he wants and tells the BRA what to do. If they like their positions for money, power, prestige, networking, future opportunity - whatever - they do what the mayor tells them. You may get small changes in a project - upgrades to the design or materials, a change in traffic patterns, even a little "mitigation money" if you need to be coerced - but you're not going to kill or even dramatically change a project if the mayor and the BRA want it no matter how evil it is for the community.
Who hears of early meetings?
Most people are busy working, raising kids, and living their lives to keep track of every possible government meeting that might affect them, let along make the time to attend them and/or write letters. This is what advocates use to their advantage. It takes time for word to get around that some change or other is in the works especially when outreach is intentionally minimized, and proponents use that to their advantage.
I hope that people working for entities making pitches are made to do so under oath at some point. Now, if someone lies and is licensed by the state as a civil engineer or something, then you can file a complaint with the state licensing board. It can be long after the event, with no stipulated statue of limitations on unprofessional conduct.
If you're too busy to get
If you're too busy to get involved with something important, then you're too busy to complain, (Not you personally, but you know what I mean.) Neighborhood groups, and the public-notice sections of neighborhood newspapers are both good resources for finding out about those meetings ahead of time.
And, letters definitely have an affect. Of course, the mayor telling the BRA that he very definitely wants something has much more of an effect.
Early meetings
No, plenty of people attended the community meetings; their input resulted in small tweaks to the original plan, but no major substantive changes. The BRA meeting that approved the plan had an overflow crowd and lasted for hours due to the number of people who wanted to speak. The plan was approved anyway. So the people who brought the lawsuit were participating in the process, they just felt that the process steamrollered over their objections, and brought the suit as a last resort.
The residences of Brighton
The residences of Brighton wouldn't be happy unless BC closed it doors. They hate all the students living off campus so BC proposes build a ton of ton of on-campus dorms and keep the undergrad students better contained and they still find stuff to complain about.
Post corrected
The ruling was by the Massachusetts Appeals Court, not the SJC, so there's a chance this issue could still come up for another ruling. And I need to get new glasses, or something.
Injurious
"the BRA may approve an IMP only if (a) it conforms to the provisions of art. 80 of the Boston zoning code, (b) conforms to the general planning objectives of the city of Boston as a whole, and (c) "on balance, nothing in the [IMP] will be injurious to the neighborhood or otherwise detrimental to the public welfare, weighing all the benefits and burdens." Art. 80D, § 80D-4.
If a 500-car garage, two stadiums, a 65,000 sq. ft athletic facility, etc. in the middle of a residential neighborhood is not injurious I don't know what is, short of a bombing. Most of the posters know little of the neighborhood or the process.
How
How exactly are those facilities injurious to neighbors?
shadows...
shadows...
Does BC want to tear down houses to build these facilities?
and if not, how are they harmful?
Harmful
BC has already torn down three houses on Foster street and has bought several on other streets.
Brighton has almost no green space left. The entire development will wipe out all green space on what was Archdiocese property.
Are you asking how a 500-car garage is harmful?
Are you asking how a 250,000 sq. foot dorm about 1/4 mile uphill from the reservoir is harmful?
Are you asking how building over one of Boston's main water supply conduits despite warning from a prior Mass Water Resources Authority is harmful?
Are you asking how a 65,000 sq ft building on what has been Conservation land is harmful?
Are you asking if filing hundreds of legal documents that say you are building ball fields when you are really building fixed-wall stadiums is harmful?
Are you asking if BRA approval of a vast development project in a residential neighborhood before any environmental impact study was done is harmful?
I hope not.
Brighton...
has plenty of green space. Those houses are less than a mile from two big parks (with full baseball fields and extra green space). The land BC wants to build on has always been private land (owned by the Archdiocese before they had to sell it...thanks pedophile priests), so it's not like residents have been hanging out in the green space.
Maybe residents have been, though
Because the kids are always using those nearby ball fields for their games/practice/etc., during grad school my friends and I would bypass the Lake St. gate (it only stopped cars, not pedestrians) and play baseball on the archdiocese's fields that nobody was using.
Since BC took over the space, they put up meaner gates and fencing (no bypass for people without hopping it).
I'm not disagreeing with you that Brighton still has a decent amount of green space...in general. But that green space used to be more convenient/usable and that changed a while back when BC got a hold of it. Now, it's not even gonna be green? Well, won't change much but the scenery I guess.
In the meantime, if Rogers Park is too busy, you've got 1 maybe 2 options to walk to and that's about it without going all the way down to the river.
I didn't realize
that there were fields in there, but still, BC bought the land and they should be able to develop it. I could see if they were looking to build a replacement to alumni stadium there and residents were concerned about noise, lights, etc, but to my knowledge they're looking to build a baseball stadium that seats 2-3k people and would be used basically for 2 months a year. It's too bad that kids won't be able to use the fields there, but technically they weren't supposed to be doing so anyway.
Is that reservoir still in use?
I thought it had been taken out of service, which is why the fence around it was removed.
It's the backup water supply for the MWRA in an emergency
So yes it's possible it will get used in an exceptional case and does need to have active connections to the water supply network.
You failed to mention that
You failed to mention that the nieghbors wanted bc to tear those specific houses down!
The question is was it injurious *on balance*.
Disclosures: I am an alumnus, and I live within a couple of hundred yards of BC, but not on the Brighton side.
The "injurious" determination is a balancing of pros and cons.
Hereinbelow, the pros or neutrals to some of your cons:
That 500 car garage will result in some number of Brighton Street spots being opened up for other residents (I realize that everything is Resident Permit Parking around there, but when I was a student at BC, I lived in a dorm on the Boston side of the line, got a MA license, paid the 02135 insurance rate (even though my zip was actually 02135 - yeah, that's when Chestnut Hill zip was still in the 021.. urban core), etc., and got a Resident Sticker, as I was absolutely entitled to do.
A dorm uphill from the Reservoir - if it is actually uphill, it is by less than 20 feet vertically and not close - also, there are already many such buildings. Even if the reservoir were still used for untreated drinking water (its not - only to keep the pressure up in an emergency), what difference does it make that there is a dorm going up? It's not like we're dealing with septic systems and a leaching field. Meanwhile, it takes several hundred students out of area apartments and accordingly frees up much-needed supply.
The Archdiocesan land was never "conservation land", and to the extent that the old Foster St. rocks were, well, they were best for conserving broken glass.
Where is this buildiing directly over the aqueduct? Even if there is one, there are many examples of that between BC and the Wachusett and Quabbin reservoirs. This sounds like the ridiculous argument that was put up over developing "Beer Can Hill" between Shea Field and Edmunds Hall years ago.
I would agree that filing hundreds of legal documents was harmful - both for the people who had to file them and for all the trees that had to be sacrificed.
The EIS to which you refer was seems to have been intended to be a delay tactic, a la what the City of Newton tried (and succeeded with for 10+ years) on the Middle Campus project. That cost Newton many hundreds of thousands, if not a million dollars, over the course of the time, and you see how that ended up. If I were a Boston taxpayer, I'd be happy that this process was not being drawn out further.
Finally, I can't remember, but did BC ever raise the Dover Amendment here? Isn't it possible that they could have more or less told the City and the zoning code to take a hike because it is *both* a religious and educational institution?
I am surprised that BC didnt
I am surprised that BC didnt take over the seminary years ago as it seemed inevitable. Maybe even once the Mass stopped being said in Latin. Why are there so many monkey wrenches looking to be thrown into affairs today. It seems to me to be a logical transition , as education seems to be catching on today . 'αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν' , Ite, missa est !