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Four-story condo project worries neighborhood of smaller homes in Roslindale
By adamg on Mon, 08/19/2013 - 9:55am
Wicked Local Roslindale reports on a proposal to replace an old gas station at 18 Robert St., just outside Roslindale Square, with a 14-unit condo building.
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Comments
Plethora of buses, plus commuter rail?
Heavens, we must bar anything more than a single family home!
If you look
one station down the street at a new 4 story rental unit(http://www.belgradeplace.com/), it hasn't done that well. $2,300 for a 1 bedroom on the outskirts of the city. Occupancy must hover around 50%. Its a great idea to add more habitational units to a growing area, but not at $2,300 for a 600 sq ft 1 bedroom. I grew up in Roslindale and it's a blue collar neighborhood, we don't need/wan't ulta-yuppie apartment, were a family neighborhood.
What is with
all the creepy kid statues at that place! They even put them in the hallways. Weird.
Are they crazy?
$2800 a month for a small two bedroom that looks like a typical low-end rental, facing the $173 a month rail line? Why in the world would anyone spend three grand a month to live way out there when they can easily find a nicer place much closer to downtown? Heck, three grand a month would be more than enough to buy a nice half-mil condo.
Nothing new
The newcomers in Southie pay upwards of $700k to live in luxury condos overlooking a methadone clinic, "pea soup" green PCP laden body of water, and a rail yard.
This isn't Natives v. Newcommers
Or it shouldn't be anyway. I agree with you that if they are charging $2300/month for a 600 sq ft. 1 bedroom at Belgrade Place good luck to them and, for that matter, if they are going to try to get that much for the units they want to build on Robert Street I think they are in for a rude awakening. That said, this shouldn't be about newcommers vs. natives. Roslindale is now a very mixed neighborhood economically. Its not a blue colar neighborhood or a white colar neighborhood. There are mail carriers and lawyers who live next door to eachother, who live next to people who work for non-profits, nurses, investment bankers, etc. Its one of the things I like about Roslindale. Building more housing in places like this is actually what is likely to continue to make Roslindale an affordable neighborhood to live in for people of all backgrounds and families too. If we keep the amount of housing static, its not going to keep prices down or (as you put it) keep yuppies out. In fact, its going to make housing prices go up because Roslindale is a desirable place to live and people getting priced out of Brookline, Cambridge and JP when they have kids are moving there daily. If the housing remains limited to what it is today, that means its going to go for top dollar when it comes on the market and pretty soon the econimic diversity of the neighborhood will be gone.
Not for long
The blue collar families that live their now purchased their homes in the 70's and 80's. Their kids who entered the same workforce will NEVER be able to afford home in the neighborhood they grew up in. Im in my 20's and grew up in Roslindale, luckily i have a high paying white collar career, however this conversation come up very frequently with friend who have blue collar job.
That is my point
I think you and I are making the same point. As I said above, just keeping the existing level of development isn't going to lower housing prices. It is going to raise them. Although I did not grow up in Roslindale, I hear from some of my neighbors the same concerns that you seem to hear from your friends. Unless more development is allowed (all over the City) we will not hear these complaints for very long because no one will ever be able to afford a house in the neighborhood except people like you and I (or people who inheret the houses from their families). Every year for the past 13 years, 3,500+ people have moved to Boston. That is a fact. They are going to keep coming. They need places to live. I can't imagine what will happen to housing prices if the new mayor ever fixs the schools. We better get building quickly.
sort of true
more multi-unit buildings will help keep condo/rental prices down, but it will likely have the opposite effect on single families on individual lots, though - especially in the areas zoned for 2 and 3 families.
ultimately more development will be good for the neighborhood and the city as a whole (especially increasing the tax base in Roslindale so we can fix up the public ways and parks - while still providing affordable housing for an economically diverse population) - but I think the days of someone with a blue collar job living cheaply in a giant (formerly upper-middle-class) single family house are pretty much over.
Rising land prices cause rising home prices
The reason the prices on single family homes are going up is because that kind of structure is an inefficient use of an increasingly valuable and limited resource: land.
It has nothing to do with the presence of multi-unit housing. Land prices go up, therefore, home prices go up. If you want to reduce home prices, either: (a) find a way to reduce land prices, or (b) subdivide the land more efficiently.
On a side note, I keep getting the feeling that some people in Boston believe in what I'm starting to call "cargo-cult city planning."
In essence: the followers of this cargo cult remember when giant single family homes were affordable and seemed to be the only option for families.
Therefore, they try to force everyone to develop giant single family homes in the hopes of attracting families at reasonable prices.
They feel that the ritual of forcing the development of such single family homes will magically make them affordable. There's no actual economic reason for that to work. That's why I call it "cargo cult" thinking.
I agree with the goal of achieving reasonably priced housing for families, but I don't buy into cargo cults. There's no reason why a diversity of housing options cannot serve families, or anyone else, just as well as (or better than) the stereotypical 1950s single-family detached house.
'We'
I live in Roslindale. More apartments = more support for local business which help make Roslindale a decent place to live.
If no-one buys or rents at the high rates, guess what? The rents come down and become more affordable to non 'ulta yuppies'.
condos
But yet the condos near there at "Belgrade Crossing" (345 Belgrade I think) have all sold. A dozen 2-bedroom units all sold for between $425K and $450K. If this new building will be condos (rather than apartments) I'd expect there are a number of people who want to live with such easy access to the Square and the train station.
no, what you want....
...is to not have competition for your rental units. Rents kinda suck because nobody wants to live in Roslindale when JP is closer and has more to offer.
Every time new construction is proposed for an area, the loudest voices are local property owners, aka renters. That was the objection to the south huntington units - it would've flooded the JP area with units that were very convenient to the medical areas, and that frightened the hell out of all the 40-something-year-old JP residents who are cruising through life thanks to the $1800+/month-per-unit they're collecting from 20-something tenants.
The JP area (like much of Boston) badly needs newer construction and more units, but all the landlords and the megalandlords (a huge chunk of JP rental units are owned or managed by just 2-3 companies) fight it tooth and nail. Who wants to live in a leaks-like-a-seive-in-the-winter, falling apart, dirty, lead-paint-ridden, oil-heated, 100+-year-old apartment for $1800 when there's a modern apartment for slightly more?
NIMBY strikes again
'“I don’t like that it’s going to block my view"
“That building going up, it’ll block the sun to my garden..."
Sounds like good reasons to prevent someone from using their private property for an approved development.
Four stories does seem high for that space, but it's right next to a 30' high train track, so I don't think the visual impact is that striking. We can't both have lower housing pricing and ensure that no neighbor will ever be unhappy with a development.
This is a weird one
I'll start by saying that I have never seen the plans for this cite, so it could be hideous for all I know or they could be planning a seven story building or something rediculous, which I can understand opposing. However, that said, I am not sure where the person who opposes the project lives that this is going to intrude on their privacy. Accross the street is the train station, and that piece of land, which is basically a triangle, is bordered on the rear by the Needham Line tracks and to the right (if you are facing it) by a small barn-like building now used as a family day care center. The front is on Robert Street, which isn't exactly a throughfare, but its not a side street either. I can't quite imagine who would want to live in a condo built on this land, but there is a place for everyone I suppose. The "abbutter" issue here really sounds like someone who doesn't like change of any kind and would really like the gas station owners to renovate the property as a gas station to make it look like it did back in 1964 when things were "nice."
And then we'll complain about the housing shortage
We need more housing in this town. 4-story seems like a pretty good idea.
Views of Alexander the Great
Views of Alexander the Great Park! 14 units does sound kinda dense for that lot. I wonder if the those Disney style condo buildings on Washington ever sold all of their units?
NOPE!
5050 Washington! Half of the units are empty, no curtains, parking lots always empty and lights are always off. They've now moved to renting them (unsuccessfully) @ $1,800 a month(See Zillow).
5050 Washington
I just went and looked at one of the two bedroom units in that complex. Nice place with two bathrooms and in-unit laundry hookups for 1650.00. The catch? They want first, last, security, and full fee! That's north of six grand in move in fees. No thanks...
What is ...
... "full feel"?
It's a fee with an
It's a fee with an exclamation point.
What is full fee?
Not having rented anything for almost 30 years, I haven't a clue.
I have a new glasses prescription, but haven't filled it because we just had to buy a new washer instead (our 23 year old one finally died).
Realtor Fee
That is when the real estate agent charges a fee the equivalent of a month's rent to show you the place.
So to move in you typically need first month's rent, last month's rent, security deposit (which you rarely get back), and realtor's fee. That is four month's rent typically, cash on the barrelhead.
Holy Cow!
Sure glad I don't have to cope with renting these days!
Michael - get your glasses checked !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's an exclamation point - FULL FEE !
Talked to a BRA muckety muck a couple years back that mentioned to me that the outer neighborhoods (JP/Rozzie/WR/HP) are much better at blocking projects than downtown. Everyone objects -but the dollar amounts are so huge downtown in transient neighborhoods where fewer people vote, the city doesn't really listen to them beyond lip service to "the process".
Move to the western neighborhoods where voters turn out in high numbers AND the tax dollars added by a project like this are fairly small - and the city listens and often doesn't permit or substantially changes the plans. One more reason we have such a shortage of moderately priced housing.
Maybe that's because people actually live here?
Like, oh, Michael?
Who's going to oppose a 50-story apartment building on top of the flaming ruins of Filene's? Maybe in ten years when downtown is fully built out as a residential area, but now? As you said, there just aren't enough people there yet.
In contrast, places like Roslindale and JP are pretty much already filled in and full of actual taxpaying voters who moved to these neighborhoods at least in part because they wanted something that wasn't full-bore World-Class 24-Hour Metropolis (as opposed to the people at Tremont on the Common, who fought later hours at Sal's). We don't have the failed greed of New York developers left strewn about on which to put large projects, even if we were zoned for them, which we're not (and yet, as somebody mentioned in another discussion, there's a fairly large residential development going in along Morton Street in Mattapan).
Plus, the closest you get to moderately priced housing in Boston is, in fact in these neighborhoods (well, parts of them, anyway).
And that is the head of the nail which you have hit
Menino will leave a lot in his legacy - and in his wake - and one of the things in his wake was his use of real estate development to consolidate power rather than structure a 21st century housing plan for a thriving and growing northeastern city (a rare commodity these days). One can only hope that our next mayor will have the vision to see beyond getting re-elected and put in place plans that will overcome these barriers to development - including zoning that gives the city more breathing room than our current mid-20th century rules allow.
Hit nail on head
Nicely said.
Thats par for the course. My
Thats par for the course. My girlfriend and I are trying to find a rental one/two bedroom for around that and we're trying to sock away cash now so we can afford it. Even with two full time jobs between us its difficult to do.
single families?
just on the other side of the commuter rail tracks it's all triple deckers, and a lot of the houses along robert street are two-families.
Plus - this project already went through zoning, they filed extensions (which you can do, btw), and also very likely falls under the additional period granted to developers when the housing market crashed. Did they object when it went through the neighborhood process the first time?
Yep
I've changed the headline.
Are they kidding? Rozzie/Boston needs more of this!
Everybody complains that the only development in Boston is luxury units downtown, freezing out any middle income folks. Neighborhoods like Rozzie can fill that gap with more projects like this, the one slated for the MBTA sub-station, and the recent construction by the Belvue train station. Big thumbs up!
And you think
These will be reasonably price? My guess is they will rent for aprox. $2,500/ month for a one bedroom or $30,000 a year.
I must have missed the law
where it was any of your concern.
The Law!
What the hell are you talking about? I just don't want to see a vacant building in my neighborhood.
I must have missed your framed degree
in business management, economics, construction management, etc which qualified you more than the developer to deem this project excessive.
If you never build enough
If you never build enough housing to have supply meet demand prices/remts will NEVER GO DOWN!
cool your jets
No, not everybody complains... just the people who complain.
Adam, as a Rozzie resident, how do you feel about this issue?
I'm probably the wrong person to ask
I live in the suburban part of the neighborhood, down by the golf course, almost in Hyde Park, where a major project is when somebody moves an old house a few feet so they can fit a new one in next door (i.e., that one house at Metropolitan and Poplar), so this doesn't personally affect me at all.
In general, I do like the idea of new apartments/condos near transit hubs, and that location is about as hubby as you get this side of Forest Hills (commuter rail's right there, and you've got all 4,000 bus lines that run through the square within a couple blocks). And more residents mean even more life for the square, which is always a good thing.
But on the other hand, the train line has always seemed like kind of a boundary between the more urban square and the somewhat less dense area on the other side.
I guess it would depend on what the building looks like. The new apartment building near Roche Bros. seems fine, although its context is a bit different - it already had a phone-company switching station on one side, that hair salon on the other and a large parking lot and supermarket behind it.
Interesting, thanks.
Interesting, thanks.
Creepy statues!
Don't forget to give the creepy statues of children their proper credit - those have to drive values down a bit of that building by Roche Bros.
Yeah what is up with those? I
Yeah what is up with those? I was wondering if there was an overly generous, but not overly talented sculptor behind them
Halloween
I assume they'll become animate on Halloween and only then will we understand the twisted evil that conceived of them to begin with.
This isn't the first time
This isn't the first time they've tried to put condos on this spot.
The plans were defeated before, maybe 20 years ago.
Someone thought they'd try it again.
Roslindale, like every other neighborhood or town in Eastern Mass.
is already too congested. More cars for Roslindale ?? Just what
Roslindale needs.
A new opportunity to bitch about something!! Yay!!
I don't have a strong opinion about this, but I figure that something useful going in that spot is better than that weird, defunct gas station. And, I doubt people would really be all that up in arms about it, since the "neighbors" are mainly a raised train line and Robert St. But, I live on the other side of the square, so this wouldn't impact me directly.
Gas station...
... was gone yesterday. Nothing left but a bit of rubble.