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Residents willing to consider condos on Walk Hill Street near American Legion in Roslindale - but not five stories' worth

Developer and aerial view of the Roslindale parcel he wants to put apartments on

Gill and his parcel. Building in the lower right is the existing Wendy's.

A developer got mixed reviews for his initial proposal for 137 condos in a five-story building on the site of a closed restaurant and the Calisi florist on Walk Hill Street tonight.

On the one hand, residents said at a meeting of the Mount Hope Mount Canterbury Neighborhood Association, they welcome anything that could bring housing that would let young Roslindale residents stay in the neighborhood. On the other hand, they said Charles Gill's proposal was simply too tall and too dense for an area that has nothing comparable, near one of the worst intersections in the city.

Gill emphasized he has yet to file for any city approvals and he and his architect Tom Maistros wanted to meet with residents first so they could come up with something more suited to the neighborhood.

As outlined tonight Gill and his partner would use the almost two-acre site for a development aimed mainly at "workforce" units that could cost $350,000 to $400,000 apiece and come with one parking space in a garage. Most of the units would be one or two bedrooms, with a small number of three-bedroom units. Roughly 15% of the units would be marketed as "afforadable" - aimed at people making up to 80% of the area's median income. Gill said the units would help retain the Millennials he said are increasingly moving to Texas or Florida because they can no longer afford Boston, as well as downsizing empty nesters.

Some residents said they'd rather see more three-bedroom units, because the problem they see is not the flight of single Millennials, but of young people with children. Maistros said that in West Roxbury, people object to three-bedroom units because they don't want more competition for limited seats in the local public schools; residents tonight noted they're in Roslindale, not West Roxbury. Some residents questioned how a $350,000, one-bedroom unit could possibly be considered anywhere near affordable.

Maistros referred to the proposal as "transit-oriented" several times. When one resident asked what transit he was talking about, he and Gill pointed to the Forest Hills Orange Line stop, which they said is within walking distance, and the 14 bus.

Resident Rick Yoder said Forest Hills is exactly a mile away. When Maistros said he used to face a long walk to the Red Line when he lived in Cambridge, residents suggested he try to walk down Walk Hill after a snow or ice storm. And don't get the residents started on the 14 bus, which Yoder said is "a joke, it's like a hobby bus," because it only runs once an hour during the week and not at all on weekends.

Gill continued he sees his proposal as the beginning of an effort to convert what is now largely a commercial strip favored by discount hunters and drag racers into more of a residential neighborhood - maybe one that could eventually attract a coffeehouse instead of the Taoc Bell that proceded him on the meeting's agenda. Gill and Maistros said that the parcel is unique because not only is it zoned for multi-family use, it's buffered from the surrounding single- and two-family homes by cemeteries and the American Legion strip.

But residents said they are worried about the impact on the intersection of Walk Hill and American Legion Highway - especially if another multi-family proposal planned for the old Mattapan State Hospital grounds down Walk Hill ever gets off the ground. Maistros said that as part of the BRA review process, Gill would have a traffic analysis done.

Residents questioned why the proposal calls for only one parking space per unit. Gill said he would be marketing it to "active lifestyle" millennails and empty-nesters not looking for a car-centric life - an idea some residents said they doubted; with a recent immigrant from South Boston saying all the Millennials there results in two or three cars per condo.

Gill added that a key part of the construction would be to clean up and beautify Canterbury Brook, currently a trash-filled creek that runs along American Legion Highway. Imagine, he said, a nice looking brook with plantings and benches along it. The condos entrances and buildings would be focused on Walk Hill, leaving the state-mandated buffer along the brook.

While most residents seemed willing to give Gill another hearing when he comes up with more detailed plans, one woman complained of "the inherent greed" in the proposal, said she found it "really despicable" and said she hopes City Hall doesn't "sell out" the neighborhood just because "we're on the wrong side of Roslindale Village."

Rough idea of what the building could look like, along Walk Hill and Canterbury Street. The large white thing at the top is the Haley School.

Walk Hill proposal
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Comments

Willing to consider shelter for their fellow humans. Do they want cookies?

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The guy's not planning a homeless shelter or some great humanitarian thing.

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I'm mocking the neighbors, not the developer.

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You should be mocking adam. The headline is drenched in entitlement.

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How so?

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"willing to consider condos"
ohh how nice of them/you (as a resident). so gracious. You act like thats a tea leaf to show how reasonable they are. Its nonsense. The residents dont have a say whether there is a residential use developed on the site, its zoned multi family residential.

They can object to height and number of units if it doesnt conform with the zoning, but lets be honest, Boston's zoning is terrible. Objecting to 137 units on a site that is about one and half acres is laughable. I can guarentee you the BCDC will ask for MORE units on a site that big.

also, $350K is about $1750 a month mortgage payment (or even less with when accounting for the down payment). Thats affordable, or at least less than the cost to rent a shitty 1 BR in the same neighborhood (take a quick look at zillow listings).

as for traffic. there is nothing around there except cemeteries and green open space, yet there is still traffic. The traffic on american legion is because people are using it to cut through to and from other areas, not because of the local density. You will not be able to tell the difference in traffic with or without this project. So whats the objection then other than people being emotional and making irrational conclusions on the impact it will have on their life?

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You're making it sound like the people who raised objections are standing in line waiting to punch orphans in the face or something, rather than raising objections to proposal by a developer looking to maximize his profits (not that there's anything wrong with that, but he's not going to be living with the after effects of whatever it is he builds, and they will).

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lol you're pro segregation

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Gun criminals should be segregated from good people.

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Look, I'm the guy who typically defends projects like this, and if were planned for Washington Street, Hyde Park Ave, or Cummins Highway, I'd be in support of this, but the residents will be driving, not taking the nonexistent public transit, which means the intersection will be screwed.

I am glad that beautification of the Canterbury Brook is proposed. It's not a bad little body of water. It's just overlooked. I bet very few Roslindale people even knew it existed.

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137 Units with 137 parking spaces, let's say they all leave over the course of two hours in the morning and come back over two hours at night. That's about a car a minute. Might not be awesome, but if the intersection can't handle another car a minute they probably should have done something about it when the Wendy's went in.

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And Wendy's has something this development doesn't have- the ability to use 2 different roads.

Walk Hill doesn't have the capacity of American Legion. I can see issues particularly in the evening when cars are trying to take a left into the complex. Calisi's doesn't have that issue right now.

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...might actually improve and "calm" the speedway conditions of ALH; used to live in this neighborhood on Neponset and raised my kids in the peaceful cemeteries where they learned to ride bikes (i know, sounds weird) and used to run through the state hospital grounds when they were a ghost town of spooky abandoned mental wards. This project is on the large side, not TOD (but nice try), but could work and actually also begin to add other comm options to the strip mall. Has potential.

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Egress is via Walk Hill, not ALH. If they could bridge the brook, traffic would be less of an issue. Of course, that would mean more regulatory hoops.

I totally get the recreational use of St. Michael's. I used to run there a while back. I even run by what would appear to be Vinny Marino and Tom Menino's burial plots. I have to admit that I use Neponset as a cut through to get to ALH and points beyond. It does make me familiar with the area and traffic issues on Walk Hill.

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perhaps if egress/ingress was in canterbury it would split the volume on to Walk Hill.

note: my kids were often confused theologically in St Mike's: they would see jesus on a cross on one grave, then jesus holding out his heart, then jesus dead again...messed em up for months.

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That would be a game changer. The only thing is that the road would need a little bit of work. My claim is that it is barely wide enough for 2 cars.

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I normally am all about "Build It" and the less parking the better. But that is when the building will be by the subway. Or hell, even the Fairmount line, because the quickest way to get frequency increases and maybe even DMUs is to force the MBTA's hand by overcrowding the existing trains.
But this is way too isolated to only have 1 parking space per unit unless it is nothing but 1 bedrooms. Those 2 bedrooms may need 2 spaces, but maybe not all of them. Perhaps the developer could set aside say half as many spaces as the 2 bedroom units to rent out as extras.
Not familiar enough with the traffic on American Legion to comment on whether it can handle more cars.

Also $350,000 is NOT affordable.

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you might not like it, but that is the world you live in.

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That way, when they agree to your project if you cut it in half (which is what you really wanted anyway), they'll feel like they've won.

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Well, to me, anyway - the architect is on the board of the local civic association in Lower Mills, so I'm sure he realizes the dance that's going on here as well as anybody.

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I thought the exact same thing. We'll probably see 40 units put there by the same guy in two years time.

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Based on this "conversation" between neighborhood residents and the developer, it seems like yet one more example of developers not listening to anything the community has to say about a proposed project. This developer sounds like he will figure out a way to do what he wants to do no matter what.

The proposed costs for only 1 or 2 bedrooms sounds way out of reach for most single people, and why would a millennial want to live on that intersection in the first place? It just seems like more of the popular rhetoric for "keeping people in Boston" when especially in neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain and Roslindale it's often families with small kids who move out of the city.

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There are a lot of people who grew up in Roslindale, JP, WR, etc and are now in their late 20s and early 30s and are trying to stay in these communities. A lot of them are willing to buy condos initially and then eventually move to homes down the line. I know this because a lot of them are my friends. They have saved up and are able to afford a one or two-bedroom, particularly with spouses or partners. The lack of supply is really constraining things though and a major (though not the only) reason for high prices. The people who think new housing is unnecessary do not realize they are indirectly pushing out people that grew up in these communities. I say this as a general comment, not specific to this ALH proposal which I agree with others is a little different given its lack of transit options and scale.

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Houses in this area are even less affordable than what they are charging for these condos. The people buying these condos will have to move away anyhow but could have stayed potentially if the condos in this project ( and others like it ) offer more three-bedroom options.

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I have mixed feelings about how useful they really are. It seems important that abutters to projects should have a public forum to discuss them. On the other hand, the 'no' vote crowd for pretty much anything will always be more motivated to come out in force I think. I haven't gone to many lately but for example the Petco and the expansion above Redd/Tony's were very much opposed to at the public meetings, but went ahead anyways. Was there really any point to all that in the end? I don't think there were any meaningful changes made to either project.

This project is at a much larger scale so it does need to be seriously considered by the zoning folks in terms of neighborhood impact. It feels too big, but then we need to add housing so if not here, where?

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Damned if you do, damned if you don't. In reality, the city needs a better system for these issues, particularly updated zoning that moves away from spot-by-spot development by variance instead of broad-based planning. That having been said, I don't know your specific situation of course, but to the extent you can get involved and go to meetings to advocate, the better. There are a lot of us that do support new housing and other amenities. We attend these meetings and say so. I was at the Tony's/Redd's meeting and recall a lot of people speaking up in support of it.

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You're dead on with the zoning. With the Redd's addition, I think the only reason community input was required was due to the proposed building being maybe 3' over the zoned height. That seems like a minor variance which should not require a community meeting. Something like this larger development, if out of zoning, should be publicly discussed.

I've gone to a few meetings but I honestly didn't feel like there a lot of use to them, mostly hot air on either side of whatever issue.

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Doesn't mean anybody has to listen to you.

Sometimes the neighborhood meetings are required, but the projects are not really required to get the approval of the neighborhood committees.

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Yes, the Petco meeting was pretty negative, but that might be a special case, given that it involved a business district that has fought against chains for 20 years and on top of that involved competition for a well liked local business.

But I didn't get the sense at either the Redd's meeting or the one last night that most people were dead set against any development at all. This isn't West Roxbury, where people scream bloody murder about property values, mayhem in the streets and the influx of coke-snorting methheads (or maybe it's meth-snorting cokeheads; I can never remember) and stamp their feet and tell the developer he's lucky they're going to let him leave the room alive, so he better just pack up and flee now.

Yes, there was the one lady who would've fit right into that, and yes, some people raised the parking/traffic issue at the Redd's meeting, but really, it seemed last night the issue was not stopping development on that property at all, but how to get it to fit in with the existing neighborhood and help out struggling young parents being priced out of Roslindale and not make a horrible intersection worse. Asking the developer to scale the thing down is not quite the same as screaming you'd rather see an abandoned building stay as it is than let apartments in (as happened at the first meeting on the Lagrange Street proposal).

And, yes, I live in Roslindale, but way at the other end of the neighborhood, so nothing that happens at this site is going to affect me personally in the least, except maybe, possibly, on those rare occasions I used American Legion Highway to get to Dorchester or South Boston.

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The linkage between community meetings where residents get their say and the actual room where the decisions are made to approve/disapprove things appears vague, but maybe that's my lack of knowledge. I know the various councillors or their staff attend and make the right noises, I know various city people come and patiently listen, but what I don't see is the actual extent to which those resident opinions are actually weighed at decision time. As Rob noted, it's all linked to how big of a zoning variance is required, right? So the Lagrange project for some reason needs more approval than say the building on Washington over by the Beethoven which is also large development, but one I've seen no posts about.

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Some residents questioned how a $350,000, one-bedroom unit could possible be considered anywhere near affordable

Have these residents attempted to buy housing anytime in the last five-ten years? 400 for a new two bedroom with covered parking is pretty affordable by Boston standards.

Anyway, it's a work in progress. While 3 bedrooms would probably be better for attracting and keeping young families, didn't we just have a project where obnoxious nimbys threw a fit about proposed 3-beds because they didn't want students? Not that students are really an issue in the southern neighborhoods....

The transit issue is a big one but unfortunately the MBTA isn't going to increase availability of a bus unless there's neighborhood density to support it. But you can't build dense neighborhoods without a way to get in and out. It's a catch-22.

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400 for a new two bedroom with covered parking is pretty affordable by Boston standards.

There-in lies the issue, Boston standards are completely out of whack compared to a majority of the country. Its only comparable if you are comparing it to NYC and SF, which are also horribly overpriced. I don't see how anyone making the median income for this area can actually afford these places.

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1) Oh no! Louie the Florist is going away?! Super friendly and helpful guy with real quality gardening supplies and plants! (insert frowny face with green down-thumb).

2) 'Transit-oriented' is laughable and it's hard to believe it wasn't meant cynically. That mile from Forest Hills is a long one - Walk Hill is flat-out dangerous to walk in any sort of bad weather, and always at night.

3) Another huge bungle - building a condo complex for 'active-lifestyle' (ie single) millenials right across from one of the most sought-after public elementary schools in the city.

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The Rosi schools are oversubscribed as it is so I don't know that this is any more of a misstep than building housing anywhere else. As you say, the Haley doesn't lack for applicants and only 50% of the seats would be walk-zone limited anyways.

I'd hate to see people start to oppose developments in Roslindale for school seat inventory reasons, but I guess that's the next logical objection, isn't it?

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